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MAYNARD’S 

English • Classic • Series 


NEW YORK 

Maynard, Merrill &l Co 

43,45 * 47 East 1022 Sr, 






24cts, 










































































































ENGLISH CLASSIC SERIES, 

FOR 

Classes in English Literature, Reading, Grammar, etc. 

EDITED BY EMINENT ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SCHOLARS. 

Each Volume contains a Sketch of the Author's Life, Prefatory and 
Explanatory Notes, etc., etc.. 


1 Byron’s Prophecy of Dante. 

(Cantos I. and II.) 

3 Milton’s R’Allegro, and II Pen- 
seroso. 

3 Dord Bacon’s Essays, Civil and 

Moral. (Selected.) 

4 Byron’s Prisoner of Cliillon. 

5 Moore’s Fire Worshippers. 

(Lalla Rookh. Selected.) 

6 Goldsmith’s Deserted Village. 

7 Scott’s Marmion. (Selections 

from Canto VI.) 

8 Scott’s Day of the Dast Minstrel. 

(Introduction and Canto I.) 

9 Burns’sCotter’sSaturdayNight, 

and other Poems. 

10 Crabbe’s The Village. 

11 Campbell’s Pleasures of Hope. 
(Abridgment of Parti.) 

12 Macaulay’s Essay on Bunyan’s 
Pilgrim’s Progress. 

13 Macaulay’s Armada, and other 
Poems. 

14 Shakespeare’s Merchant of Ve¬ 
nice. (Selections from Acts I., 
IIP, and IV.) 

15 Goldsmith’s Traveller. 

16 Hogg’s Queen’s Wake, andKil- 
meny. 

17 Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner. 

18 Addison’s Sir Roger de Cover- 
ley. 

19 Gray’s Elegy in a Country 
Churchyard. 

30 Scott’s Dady of the Dake. (Canto 

I.) 

21 Shakespeare’s As You Dike It, 

etc. (Selections.) 

22 Shakespeare’s King John, and 

Richard II. (Selections.) 

23 Shakespeare’s Henry IV., Hen¬ 

ry V., Henry VI. (Selections.) 

34 Shakespeare’s Henry VIII., i 

Julius Caesar. (Selections.) 

35 Wordsworth’s Excursion. (B1 

36 Pope’s Essay on Criticism. 

37 Spenser’sFaerieQueene. (Car 

I. and II.) 

38 Cowper’s Task. (Bookl.) 

39 Milton’s Comus. 

30 Tennyson’s Enoch Arden, 

Dotus Eaters, Ulysses, 
Tithonus. 


31 Irving’s Sketch Book. (Selec¬ 
tions.) 

33 Dickens’s Christmas Carol. 

(Condensed.) 

33 Carlyle’s Hero as a Prophet. 

34 Macaulay’s Warren Hastings. 

(Condensed.) 

35 Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wake¬ 

field. (Condensed.) 

36 Tennyson’s The Two Voices, 

aud A Dream of Fair Women. 

37 Memory Quotations. 

38 Cavalier Poets. 

39 Dryden’s Alexander’s Feast, 

and MacFlecknoe. 

40 Keats’s The Eve of St. Agnes. 

41 Irving.’s Degernl of Sleepy Hol¬ 

low. 

43 Damb’s Tales from Shake¬ 
speare. 

43 De Row’s How to Teach Read¬ 

ing. 

44 Webster’s Bunker Hill Ora¬ 

tions. 

45 The Academy Orthotipist. A 

Manual of Pronunciation. 

46 Milton’s Rycidas, and Hymn 

on the Nativity. 

47 Bryant’s TlianatopsiS, and Other 

Poems. 

48 Buskin’s Modern Painters. 

(Selections.) 

49 The Shakespeare Speaker. ' 

50 Thackeray’s Roundabout Pa 1 

pers. 

51 Webster’s Oration on Adams 

and Jefferson. 

53 Brown’s Rab and his Friends. 

53 Morris’s Dife and Death of 

Jason. 

54 Bui'ke’s Speech 013 American 

Taxation. 


(Additional 


LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 


Chap .'EZ^opyright No._ 

Shel f . Vi a 18 T Ur 

_ 


UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 





































English Classic 


63 The Antigone of Sophocles. 

English Version by Thos. Franck- 
lin, D.D. 

64 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 

(Selected Poems.) 

65 Robert Browning. (Selected 

Poems.) 

66 Addison's Spectator. (Selec’ns.) 

67 Scenes from George Eliot's 

Adam Bede. 

68 Matthew Arnold's Culture and 

Anarchy. 

69 DeQuincey’s Joan of Arc. 

70 Carlyle’s Essay on Burns. 

71 Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pil¬ 

grimage. 

72 Poe’s Raven, and other Poems. 

73 & 74 Macaulay’s Rord Clive. 

(Double Number.) 

75 Webster’s Reply to Hayne. 
76&77 Macaulay’s Rays of An¬ 
cient Rome. (Double Number.) 

78 American Patriotic Selections: 

Declaration of Independence, 
Washington’s Farewell Ad¬ 
dress, Rincoln’s Gettysburg 
Speech, etc. 

79 & 80 Scott’s Rady of the Rake. 

(Condensed.) 

81 & 82 Scott’s Marmion. (Con¬ 
densed.) 

83 & 84 Pope’s Essay on Man. 

85 Shelley’s Skylark, Adonais, and 

other Poems. 

86 Dickens’s Cricket on the 

Hearth. 

87 Spencer’s Philosophy of Style* 

88 Ramb’s Essays of Elia. 

89 Cowper’s Task, Book IR 

90 Wordsworth’s Selected Poems. 

91 Tennyson’s The Holy Grail, and 

Sir Galahad. 

92 Addison’s Cato. 

93 Irving’s Westminster Abbey, 

and Christmas Sketches. 

94 & 95 Macaulay’s Earl 4 of Chat¬ 

ham. Second Essay.* 

96 Early English Ballads. 

97 Skelton, Wyatt, and Surrey* 

(Selected Poems.) 

98 Edwin Arnold. (Selected Poems.) 

99 Caxton and Daniel. (Selections.) 

100 Fuller and Hooker. (Selections.) 

101 Marlowe’s Jew of Malta. (Con¬ 

densed.) 

102-103 Macaulay’s Essay on Mil¬ 
ton. 

104-105 Macaulay’s Essay on Ad¬ 
dison. 

100 Macaulay’s Essay on Bos¬ 
well’s Johnson. 


SERI ES— Continued. 


107 Mandeville’s Travels and Wy- 
cliffe’s Bible. (Selections.) 
108-109 Macaulay’s Essay on Fred¬ 
erick the Great. 

110-111 Milton’s Samson Agonis- 
tes. | 

112-113-114 Franklin’s Autobiog¬ 
raphy. 

115-116 Herodotus’s Stories of 
Croesus, Cyrus, and Babylon. 

117 Irving’s Alhambra. 

118 Burke’s Present Discontents. 

119 Burke’s Speech on Concilia¬ 
tion with American Colonies. 

120 Macaulay's Essay on Byron. 
121-122 Motley’s Peter the Great. 

123 Emerson’s American Scholar. 

124 Arnold’s Sohrab and Rustum. 
125-126 Rongfellow’s Evangeline. 

127 Andersen's Danish Fairy Tales. 
(Selected.) 

128 Tennyson’s The Coming of 
Arthur, and The Passing of 
Arthur. 

129 Rowell’s The Vision of Sir 
Raunfal, and other Poems. 

130 Whittier’s Songs of Rabor, and 

other Poems. 

131 Words of Abraham Rincoin. 

132 Grimm’s German Fairy Tales. 
(Selected.) 

133 iEsop’s Fables. (Selected.) 

134 Arabian Nights. Aladdin, or 
the Wonderful Ramp. 

135-36 The Psalter. 

137-38 Scott’s Ivanhoe. (Con¬ 
densed.) 

139-40 Scott’s Kenilworth. (Con¬ 
densed.) 

141-42 Scott’s The Talisman. (Con¬ 
densed.) 

143 Gods and Heroes of the North. 
144-45 Pope’s Iliad s of Homer. 
(Selections from Books I.-VIII.) 

146 Four* Mediaeval Chroniclers. 

147 Dante’s Inferno. (Condensed.) 
148-49 The Book of Job. (Revised 

Version.) 

150 Bow-Wow and Mew-Mew. By 
Georgiana M. Craik. 

151 The Niirnberg Stove. ByOuida. 

152 Hayne’s Speech. To which 
Webster replied. 

153 Alice’s Adventures in Won¬ 
derland. (Condensed.) By Lewis 

Carroll. 

154-155 Defoe’s Journal of the 
Plague. (Condensed.) 

156-157 More’s Utopia. (Con¬ 
densed.) 


ADDITIONAL NUMBERS ON NEXT PAGE. 




















\ 






























I 


7 / 


MAYNARD’S ENGLISH CLASSIC SERIES-No. 188-189 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


The Geay Champion. The Ministek’s Black Veil. The Maypole 
of Mekky Mount. Howe’s Masquerade. Edward Ran¬ 
dolph’s Portrait. Lady Eleanore’s Mantle. 

Old Esther Dudley 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 


I? 


WITH BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH AND NOTES 



NEW YORK 

MAYNARD, MERRILL, & CO. 

V*VY' 












, X 6 

y\ J V* 


NOTE 

Many, if not all, of the stories in the two 
volumes of “Twice-told Tales” originally ap¬ 
peared in magazines and annuals, afterwards 
being brought together under a common title 
and published at Boston in 1837. For this 
volume of Maynard’s English Classic Series 
seven stories have been given in their entirety 
as representative of the best of the original 
tales. 


Copyright, 1897, by Maynard, Merrill, & Co. 





BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 


Nathaniel Hawthorne came of a stern, New England 
ancestry. The founder of the family in this country, William 
Hathorne (so spelled, but pronounced nearly as afterwards 
changed by Hawthorne), emigrated from England in 1630, 
and became a man of some prominence in the new country, 
a magistrate and deputy in the colonial assembly. His son, 
Judge John Hawthorne, was prominent in the Salem witch¬ 
craft persecutions, and earned an unenviable reputation for 
harsh judgments. His nature is well shown by the following 
account of a trial at which he presided. 

Of one accused woman brought before him, the husband 
wrote: “She was forced to stand with her arms stretched 
out. I requested that I might hold one of her hands, but it 
was declined me ; then she desired me to wipe the tears from 
her eyqs, which I did ; then she desired that she might lean 
herself on me, saying she should faint. Justice Hathorne 
replied she had strength enough to torture these persons, and 
she should have strength enough to stand. I repeating some¬ 
thing against their cruel proceedings, they commanded me to 
be silent, or else I should be turned out of the room.” 

The third son of Judge Hathorne was “Farmer Joseph,” 
who lived and died peaceably at Salem. Joseph’s fifth son, 
“ Bold Daniel,” became a privateersman in the Revolutionary 
War. Daniel’s third son, Nathaniel, was born in 1775, and 
was the father of our author. 

Hawthorne’s father was a sea-captain, reserved, melancholy, 
and stern, and said to be fond of reading and of children. He 
married Elizabeth Manning, a descendant of Richard Manning, 



4 


BIOGRAPI1ICA L SKE TCH 


of Dartmouth, England, and at Salem, Massachusetts, on 
July 4, 1804, Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author, was born. 

His father died four years after, and Hawthorne was 
brought up by his grandfather Manning, who paid for his 
education. 

In later life Hawthorne wrote that ‘ ‘ one of the peculi¬ 
arities ” of his boyhood was £ ‘ a grievous disinclination to go 
to school.” He appears to have been an adventurous boy, 
fond of all outdoor exercises, until an accident in playing ball 
injured his foot. This lameness lasted a long while and re¬ 
stricted his boyish activity so that he took to reading as a 
pastime. His letters written at this time contain frequent 
allusions to books, and also occasional scraps of poetry. 

In 1821 Hawthorne entered Bowdoin College, where he had 
the good fortune to be a classmate of Longfellow. Another 
classmate was Jonathan Cilley, afterwards a member of Con¬ 
gress. Franklin Pierce, afterwards President of the United 
States and an intimate friend, was at that time a sophomore. 

These friendships appear to have been about all that he 
gained from his college life. “I was an idle student,” he 
wrote in after years, “ negligent of college rules and the Pro¬ 
crustean details of academic life, rather choosing to nurse my 
own fancies than to dig Greek roots and be numbered among 
the learned Thebans.” His extreme shyness is shown by the 
fact that he regularly paid fines rather than make declama¬ 
tions. 

Hawthorne graduated in 1825, and returned to Salem, where 
he settled in the gloomy old family mansion and began to 
write ; at first tentatively, and later with the avowed purpose 
of making literature his profession. In his “ Note Book,” 
under date of October 4, 1840, he says: “Here I sit in this 
accustomed chamber where I used to sit in days gone by. . . . 
Here I have written many tales,—many that have been burned 
to ashes, many that doubtless deserve the same fate. . . . and 
here I sat a long, long time, waiting patiently for the world 
to know me, and sometimes wondering why it did not know 
me sooner, or whether it would ever know me at all,—at 
least, till I were in my grave.” 





BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 


o 


He finally published some tales in the magazines, but these 
hardly served the purpose of bringing him fairly before the 
public. “ It was like a man talking to himself in a dark 
place,” he said. 

It was not until March, 1837, that Hawthorne succeeded in 
getting a volume, the first series of “ Twice Told Tales,” pub¬ 
lished. It brought him an excellent review by Longfellow, 
of which a portion is given in the “ Critical Opinions,” and 
brought him before the world of letters as an accredited 
author ; but financially was not fortunate, as the sales barely 
paid the cost of publication. Before long, however, the young 
author’s necessities were relieved by an appointment to the 
Boston Custom House as weigher and gauger at a salary of 
$1,200. This was hardly a congenial occupation for a man of 
a poetical temperament, but Hawthorne made the best of it, 
and, at the end of his tenure of office (lie was removed by a 
change of administration) had saved one thousand dollars 
from his salary. 

Carlyle at this time was speaking to the youth of America 
through Emerson with a voice of thunder, and transcendent¬ 
alism was abroad in the land. Hawthorne’s friends, the Pea- 
bodys, were Emersonian enthusiasts, and it was probably- 
through their influence that he was drawn into the Brook 
Farm community, which seemed to promise an economical - 
retreat, where he could find congenial society and the leisure 
to write. He embarked his thousand dollars in this enter¬ 
prise, and arrived at Brook Farm, April 12, 1841. This com¬ 
munity was an unconventional society of cultivated men and 
women, sick of politics, and hoping by a communal existence 
to release much time for the development of their individual 
genius. 

Hawthorne remained in the community about a year. But 
before he left he had made the discovery that he had never 
been really there in heart. “ The real Me was never an asso¬ 
ciate of the community ; there has been a spectral Appearance 
there, sounding the horn at daybreak, and milking the cows, 
and hoeing potatoes, and raking hay, toiling in the sun, and 
doing me the honor to assume my name. But this spectre 


6 


BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 


was not myself.” But the great eye of Hawthorne was there, 
and every scene was pictured on it. It was the sufficient 
raison d'etre of Brook Farm that it produced that truly Amer¬ 
ican novel “ The Blithedale Romance.” 

Hawthorne was married in 1842, and went to live at “ The 
Old Manse ” at Concord, Massachusetts. Here he spent four 
happy years, enjoying the society of Emerson, Thoreau, 
Ellery Channing,—who, Emerson said, wrote “ poetry for 
poets ”—and of other cultivated men and women. 

In 1846 Hawthorne was appointed Surveyor of Customs at 
Salem, Massachusetts. He held this position until 1849, but, 
as the office must have been irksome to him, and the Salem 
people did not treat him with any geniality, he was probably 
not sorry when a change of administration ousted him from 
his position. 

Once more he settled down to steady literary work, with 
the result that in 1850 “The Scarlet Letter” appeared, and 
achieved such a marked success that he was enabled to re¬ 
move to Lenox, Massachusetts. His next book was “The 
House of Seven Gables.” In 1851 he removed to West New¬ 
ton, Massachusetts, where “The Blithedale Romance” was 
■written, and in 1852 he moved again to Concord. 

In 1858 Hawthorne was appointed United States Consul to 
Liverpool, and for six years nothing appeared from his pen. 
His stay in England seems to have been a failure. He met 
none of the great men of letters, then so numerous in Eng¬ 
land, except the Brownings. He never really liked the Eng¬ 
lish, and after they had read his “ Our Old Home,” they very 
generally felt the same toward him. It is in this volume that 
he describes Englishwomen as made up of steaks and sirloins, 
a remark which not unnaturally stirred up a strong feeling of 
resentment in England. 

After leaving Liverpool in 1857, Hawthorne and his family 
travelled south, and in January, 1858, they settled in Rome. 
Except for the illness of his eldest daughter, the next two 
years were among the happiest of Hawthorne’s life. He en¬ 
joyed the society he met in Rome ; W. W. Story the eminent 
sculptor, the historian Motley, William Cullen Bryant, Mrs. 


BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 


7 


Jameson and other cultivated people being his intimates. He 
had come to Rome, however, merely as a pleasant excursion, 
having little or no knowledge of art, and no taste for ruins, so 
that it was some time before he began to take Rome seriously. 
The stay bore fruit when he returned to England on his way 
back to America, in the form of “ The Marble Faun,"’ probably 
his most popular book. 

In 1860 Hawthorne settled again in Concord with the inten¬ 
tion of giving himself up to his literary work, but it was not 
to be for long. Presently the war broke out, and he became 
gloomy and unable to work, and in 1864 he died when on a 
trip to New Hampshire with his old friend, Franklin Pierce. 
He was buried at Concord, on May 24, 1864. 

This slight sketch may fitly close by a description of Haw¬ 
thorne’s personal appearance by his friend and biographer, 
Moncure D. Conway. 

“ He impressed me—the present writer—as of much nobler 
presence than formerly, and certainly he was one of the finest- 
looking of men. I observed him closely at a dinner of the 
Literary Club, in Boston, the great feature of which was the 
presence of Hawthorne, then just from Europe (July, 1860). 
His great athletic frame was softened by its repose, which was 
the more striking beside the vivacity of Agassiz, at whose 
side he sat—himself a magnificent man in appearance. Haw¬ 
thorne’s massive brow and fine aquiline nose were of such 
commanding strength as to make the mouth and chin seem a 
little weak by contrast. The upper lip was hidden by a thick 
moustache ; the under lip was somewhat too pronounced, per¬ 
haps. The head was most shapely in front, but at the back 
was singularly flat. This peculiarity appears in a bust of 
Hawthorne now in possession of his friend and banker, Mr. 
Hooker, at Rome. It is by Phillips, and is especially interest¬ 
ing as representing the author in early life, before the some¬ 
what severe mouth was modified by a moustache. The eyes 
were at once dark and lucid, very large but never staring, 
incurious, soft and pathetic as those of a deer. When ad¬ 
dressed, a gracious smile accompanied his always gentle 
reply, and the most engaging expression suffused his warm 


8 


BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 


brown face. The smile, however, was sweet only while in 
che eyes ; when it extended to the mouth it seemed to give 
him pain. There must have been battles between those soft 
3yes and this mouth. His voice was sweet and low, but sug¬ 
gested a reserve of quick and powerful intelligence. In con¬ 
versation, the trait that struck me most was his perfect candor. 
There was no faintest suggestion of secrecy. I have a suspi¬ 
cion that his shyness was that of one whose heart was without 
bolts or bars, and who felt himself at the mercy of every 
‘ interviewer ’ that might chance to get hold of him.” 



CRITICAL OPINIONS 


He was a beautiful, natural, original genius, and liis life 
had been singularly exempt from worldly preoccupations 
and vulgar efforts. It had been as pure, as simple, as un¬ 
sophisticated, as his work. He had lived primarily in his 
domestic affections, which were of the tendeivst kind ; and 
then—without eagerness, without pretension, but with a 
great deal of quiet devotion—in his charming art. His 
work will remain; it is too original and exquisite to pass 
away; among the men of imagination he will always have 
his niche. No one has had just that vision of life, and no 
one has had a literary form that more successfully ex¬ 
pressed his vision. He was not a moralist, and he was not 
simply a poet. The moralists are weightier, denser, rich¬ 
er, in a sense; the poets are more purely inconclusive 
and irresponsible. He combined in a singular degree the 
spontaneity of the imagination with a haunting care for 
moral problems. Man’s conscience was his theme, but he 
saw it in the light of a creative fancy which added, out of 
its own substance, an interest, and, I may almost say, an 
importance .—Hawthorne by Henry James—-English Men of 
Letters Series. 

The art of story-telling is manifold, and its charm de¬ 
pends greatly upon the infinite variety of its applications. 
And yet, for that very reason, there are moods in which 
one wishes that the modern story-teller would more fre¬ 
quently lead us away from the commonplace regions of 
newspapers and railways to regions where the imagination 
can have fair play. Hawthorne is one of the few eminent 
writers to whose guidance we may in such moods most 
safely entrust ourselves. . . . 

9 



10 


CRITICAL OPINIONS 


Of Twice-Told Tales Hawthorne says: “ The book re¬ 
quires to be read in the clear brown twilight atmosphere 
in which it was written; if opened in the sunshine it is apt 
to look exceedingly like a volume of blank pages.” . . . 

We see him trying various experiments to hit off that 
delicate mean between the fanciful and the prosaic which 
shall satisfy his taste and be intelligible to the outside 
world. Sometimes he gives us a fragment of historical 
romance, as in the story of the stern old regicide who sud¬ 
denly appears from the woods to head the colonists of 
Massachusetts in a critical emergency; then he tries his 
hand at a bit of allegory, and describes the search for the 
mythical carbuncle which blazes by its inherent splendor 
on the face of a mysterious cliff in the depths of the un¬ 
trodden wilderness, and lures old and young, the worldly 
and the romantic, to waste their lives in the vain effort to 
discover it—for the carbuncle is the ideal which mocks our 
pursuit, and may be our curse or our blessing. Then per¬ 
haps we have a domestic piece—a quiet description of a 
New England country scene—touched with a grace which 
reminds us of the creators of Sir Roger de Coverley or the 
Vicar of Wakefield. Occasionally there is a fragment of 
pure diablerie, as in the story of the lady who consults the 
witch in the hollow T of the three hills; and more frequently 
he tries to work out one of those strange psychological 
problems which he afterwards treated with more fullness 
of power .—Hours in a Library , Leslie Stephen. 

Art, subjectively considered, is the means adopted by 
the artist to tell what is in him ; and Hawthorne, up to the 
epoch of “ The Scarlet Letter,” was moved to utter himself 
upon three classes of subjects—philosophy, history, and 
that derivative and sublimation of the two which is called 
Story. But so strong in him was the instinct of story that 
it colored and shaped his treatment of the former topics. 
His essays take the form of allegories, and his historical 
pieces assume the aspect less of narratives than of pic¬ 
tures. He cannot be satisfied with simply telling us what 


CRITICAL OPINIONS 


11 


happened; he must bring us to look upon the scene as 
transacted in his imagination. . . . 

It might be objected to an analysis such as has been in¬ 
dicated (rather than made) in the foregoing pages, that 
Hawthorne is substantially a romancer,—a teller of tales,— 
and that, therefore, his excursions into other regions are 
of little practical significance. But the story was never 
the chief object in Hawthorne’s writings; the skeleton 
having once been designed, he immediately forgot all about 
it, and devoted all his energies to the flesh-and-blood of 
the composition. And this flesh and blood is no mere ap¬ 
pendage ; it is wrought out of the author’s very life. In 
order that the outward beauty of the complete work may 
be adequately appreciated, it is, therefore, necessary to 
understand something of its inner organization and secret 
genesis. It is alive and has the inexhaustible fascination 
of life—the depth beyond depth. It is illuminated by 
imagination and graced by art; but imagination only ren¬ 
ders the informing truth more conspicuous, and art is the 
form which symmetrical truth inevitably assumes. In 
short, save as regards the surest externals nothing in Haw¬ 
thorne’s fiction is fictitious. And therefore w T e lose w T hat 
is best in them unless we learn how T to read between the 
lines—how to detect the writer’s own lineaments beneath 
the multifarious marks wherewith he veils them .—Julian 
Hawthorne , The Century, May 1880. 

But true poetry (from which higher fiction differs only 
in form) takes for the theatre of its creations space unoc¬ 
cupied by grosser shapes and material agencies. Its prov¬ 
ince lies beyond, beneath and within the world of matter and 
of fact. It leaves things as they are; but breathes into them 
a vital glow, writes upon them the image of the unseen 
and spiritual, and robes them in a softer light, a richer 
charm, a purer beauty. This is the character of the Tales 
before us. For this we prize and admire them. They are 
poetry from the deepest fountains of inspiration. Their 
interest consists in the development not of events but of 


12 


CEITICAL OPINIONS 


sentiment. Many of them have neither plot nor catastro¬ 
phe, indeed, are not tales in the common sense of the 
word; but are simply flower-garlands of poetic feeling 
wreathed about some every-day scene or object. 

We thank and love the man who draws aside for us the 
veil between sense and spirit, who reveals to us the inward 
significance, the hidden harmonies of common things, who 
bathes in poetic tints the prosaic elements of daily life. 
We welcome such a work and deem it truly great, however 
humble or unostentatious the form in which itis wrought. 
We feel that Mr. Hawthorne has done this for us and we 
thank him. We thank him also for having given us 
creations so full of moral purity and beauty.— A. P. Pea¬ 
body, Christian Examiner, Nov., 1838. 

The spell of mysterious horror which kindled Haw¬ 
thorne’s imagination was a test of the character of his 
genius. The mind of this child of witch-haunted Salem 
loved to hover between the natural and the supernatural, 
and sought to tread the almost imperceptible and doubtful 
line of contact. He instinctively sketched the phantoms 
that have the figures of men, but are not human; the elusive, 
shadowy scenery which, like that of Gustave Dore’s pic¬ 
tures, is nature sympathizing in her forms and aspects with 
the emotions of terror or aw^e which the tale excites. His 
genius broods entranced over the evanescent phantasma¬ 
goria of the vague debatable land in which the realities of 
experience blend with ghostly doubts and wonders. 

But from its poisonous flowers what a wondrous perfume 
he distilled! Through his magic reed, into what penetrat¬ 
ing melody he blew that deathly air! His restless fancy 
seemed to seek a sin that was hopeless, a cruel despair 
that no faith could throw off. Yet his naive and well- 
poised genius hung over the gulf of blackness, and peered 
into the pit with the steady nerve and simple face of a boy. 
The mind of the reader follows him with an aching won¬ 
der and admiration, as the bewildered old mother forester 
watched Undine’s gambols. As Hawthorne describes Mir- 



CRITICAL OPINIONS 


13 


iam in “ The Marble Faun,” so may the character of his 
genius be most truly indicated. Miriam, the reader will 
remember, turns to Hilda and Kenyon for sympathy. 
Yet it was to little purpose that she approached the edge 
of the voiceless gulf between herself and them. Standing 
on the utmost verge of that dark chasm, she might stretch 
out her hand and never clasp a hand of theirs; she might 
strive to call out, ‘ Help, friends! help!’ but, as with dream¬ 
ers when they shout, her voice would perish inaudibly in 
the remoteness that seemed such a little way. This per¬ 
ception of an infinite shivering solitude, amid which we 
cannot come close enough to human beings to be warmed 
by them, and when they turn to cold, chilly shapes of mist, 
is one of the most forlorn results of any accident, misfor¬ 
tune, crime, or peculiarity of character, that puts an indi¬ 
vidual ajar with the world.— G. W. Curtis , North American 
Review , Oct. 1864. 

But we may often recognize, even when we cannot 
express in words, the strange family likeness which exists 
in characteristics which are superficially antagonistic. 
The man of action may be bound by subtle ties to the 
speculative metaphysician; and Hawthorne’s mind, 
amidst the most obvious differences, had still an affinity to 
his remote forefathers. Their bugbears had become his 
playthings; but the witches, though they have no reality 
have still a fascination for him. The interest which he feels 
in them, even in their now shadowy state, is a proof that he 
would have believed in them in good earnest a century 
and a half earlier. The imagination, working in a 
different intellectual atmosphere, is unable to project its 
images upon the external world; but it still forms them in 
the old shape. His solitary musings necessarily employ a 
modern dialect, but they often turn on the same topics 
which occurred to Johnathan Edwards in the woods of 
Connecticut. Instead of the old Puritan speculations 
aboutPredestination and free-will,he dwells upon the trans¬ 
mission by natural laws of an hereditary curse, and upon 


14 


CRITICAL OPINIONS 


the strange blending of good and evil, which may cause 
sin to be an awakening impulse in the human soul. . . . 

The strange mysteries in which the world and our nature 
are shrouded are always present to his imagination; he 
catches dim glimpses of the laws which bring out strange 
harmonies, but, on the whole, tend rather to deepen than 
to clear the mysteries. He loves the marvellous, not in the 
vulgar sense of the word, but as a symbol of the perplexity 
which encounters every thoughtful man in his journey 
through life. Similar tenets at an earlier period might, 
with almost equal probability, have led him to the stake as 
a dabbler in forbidden sciences, or have caused him to be 
revered as one to whom a deep spiritual instinct had been 
granted .—Hours in a Library, Leslie Stephen. 

Another characteristic of this writer is the exceeding 
beauty of his style. It is as clear as running waters are. 
Indeed, he uses words as mere stepping-stones, upon 
which, with a free and youthful bound, his spirit crosses 
and recrosses the bright and rushing stream of thought. 
Some writers of the present day have introduced a kind of 
Gothic architecture into their style. All is fantastic, vast 
and wonderous in the outward form, and within it myster¬ 
ious twilight, and the swelling sound of an organ, and a 
voice chanting hymns in Latin, which need a translation 
for many of the crowd.— H. W. Longfellow, North American 
Review, 1837. 





TWICE-TOLD TALES 


THE GRAY CHAMPION 

There was ouce a time when New England 
groaned under the actual pressure of heavier 
wrongs than those threatened ones which 
brought on the Revolution. James II., the bigot¬ 
ed successor of Charles the Voluptuous, had 5 
annulled the charters of all the colonies, and sent a 
harsh and unprincipled soldier to take away our 
liberties and endanger our religion. The adminis¬ 
tration of Sir Edmund Andros lacked scarcely a 
single characteristic of tyranny: a Governor and 10 
Council, holding office from the King, and wholly 
independent of the country ; laws made and taxes 
levied without concurrence of the people, immedi¬ 
ate or by their representatives; the rights of pri¬ 
vate citizens violated, and the titles of all landed 15 
property declared void ; the voice of complaint 
stifled by restrictions on the press; and, finally, 
disaffection overawed by the first band of mercen¬ 
ary troops that ever marched on our free soil. 



16 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


For two years our ancestors were kept in sullen 
submission by that filial love which had invariably 
secured their allegiance to the mother country, 
whether its head chanced to be a Parliament, Pro- 
5tector, or Popish Monarch. Till these evil times, 
however, such allegiance had been merely nominal, 
and the colonists had ruled themselves, enjoying 
far more freedom than is even yet the privilege of 
the native subjects of Great Britain. 

10 At length a rumor reached our shores that the 
Prince of Orange had ventured on an enterprise the 
success of which would be the triumph of civil and 
religious rights and the salvation of New England. 
It was but a doubtful whisper; it might be false, 
is or the attempt might fail; and, in either case, the 
man that stirred against King James would lose 
his head. Still, the intelligence produced a marked 
effect. The people smiled mysteriously in the 
streets, and threw bold glances at their oppress- 
20ors; while, far and Avide, there Avas a subdued and 
silent agitation, as if the slightest signal Avould 
rouse the Avhole land from its sluggish desponden¬ 
cy. AAvare of their danger, the rulers resolved to 
avert it by an imposing display of strength, and 
25 perhaps to confirm their despotism by yet harsher 
measures. One afternoon in April, 1689, Sir Ed¬ 
mund Andros and his favorite councillors, being 
Avarm Avith wine, assembled the redcoats of the 
Governor’s Guard, and made their appearance in 
30 the streets of Boston. The sun Avas near setting 
AA 7 hen the march commenced. 









THE GEAY CHAMPION 


17 


The roll of the drum, at that unquiet crisis, 
seemed to go through the streets, less as the mar¬ 
tial music of the soldiers, than as a muster-call to 
the inhabitants themselves. A multitude, by vari¬ 
ous avenues, assembled in King Street, which was 
destined to be the scene, nearly a century after¬ 
wards, of another encounter between the troops of 
Britain and a people struggling against her tyran¬ 
ny. Though more than sixty years had elapsed 
since the Pilgrims came, this crowd of their de¬ 
scendants still showed the strong and sombre 
features of their character perhaps more strikingly 
in such a stern emergency than on happier occa¬ 
sions. There was the sober garb, the general 
severity of mien, the gloomy but undismayed 
expression, the Scriptural forms of speech, and the 
confidence in Heaven’s blessing on a righteous 
cause, which would have marked a band of the 
original Puritans, when threatened by some peril 
of the wilderness. Indeed, it was not yet time for 
the old spirit to be extinct; since there were men in 
the street, that day, who had worshipped there be¬ 
neath the trees, before a house was reared to the 
God for whom they had become exiles. Old sol- 


7 Another Encounter. On March 5th, 1770occurred the “Boston Massa¬ 
cre.” one of the,'many inflammatory events leading up to the Revolution- 
It was a broil between the populace and the British soldiers in King 
Street (now State Street), in which the soldiers fired, killing three men 
and wounding eight. 

24 Old Soldiers of the Parliament. Old Puritans who had fought in the 
Parliamentary Army under Cromwell, 


5 

10 

15 

20 



18 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


diers of the Parliament were here, too, smiling 
grimly at the thought, that their aged arms might 
strike another blow against the house of Stuart. 
Here, also, were the veterans of King Philip’s war, 
5 who had burned villages and slaughtered young 
and old, with pious fierceness, while the godly souls 
throughout the land were helping them with pray¬ 
er. Several ministers were scattered among the 
crowd, which, unlike all other mobs, regarded them 
10 with such reverence, as if there were sanctity in 
their very garments. These holy men exerted their 
influence to quiet the people, but not to disperse 
them. Meantime, the purpose of the Governor, in 
disturbing the peace of the town, at a period when 
15 the slightest commotion might throw the country 
into a ferment, was almost the universal subject of 
inquiry, and variously explained. 

“ Satan will strike his master-stroke presently,” 
cried some, “because he knoweth that his time is 
20 short. All our godly pastors are to be dragged to 
prison! We shall see them at a Smithfield fire in 
King Street! ” 

Hereupon the people of each parish gathered 
closer round their minister, who looked calmly up- 
25 wards and assumed a more apostolic dignity, as 
well befitted a candidate for the highest honor of 
his profession, the crown of martyrdom. It was 
actually fancied, at that, period, that New England 


21 Smithfield. A part of London formerly just outside the old city 
walls, w r hich is famous as the scene of the burning of hundreds of Prot¬ 
estants during the persecutions of the ifith Century. 



THE GRAY CHAMPION 


19 


might have a John Rogers of her own, to take the 
place of that worthy in the Primer. 

“The Pope of Rome has given orders for a new 
St. Bartholomew!” cried others. “We are to be 
massacred, man and male child ! ” 5 

Neither was this rumor wholly discredited, al¬ 
though the wiser class believed the Governor’s 
object somewhat less atrocious. His predecessor 
under the old charter, Brad street, a venerable com¬ 
panion of the first settlers, was known to be in 10 
town. There were grounds for conjecturing that 
Sir Edmund Andros intended, at once, to strike 
terror, by a parade of military force, and to con¬ 
found the opposite faction by possessing himself of 
their chief. 15 

“Stand firm for the old charter, Governor!” 
shouted the crowd, seizing upon the idea. “The 
o-ood old Governor Bradstreet! ” 

n 

2 Primer. The “New England Primer ” is meant. From the end of 
the 17th Century well into this. The “New England Primer” was the 
only primer used. It was a little book illustrated with quaint woodcuts 
usually bound in oaken covers as inflexible as the religious doctrines 
it contained. It has been aptly called “The little Bible of New Eng¬ 
land.” The account! of John Rogers in the Primer may be quoted 
verbatim: 

"Mr. John Rogers, Minister of the Gospel in London, was the first 
martyr in Queen Mary’s reign.’and was burnt at Smithfleld. February 
the fourteenth. 1554. His wife, with nine small children, and one at her 
breast, following him to the stake: with which sorrowful sight he was 
not in the least daunted, but with wonderful patience, died courage¬ 
ously for the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” This was accompanied by a 
rough cut showing the martyr’s wife and children looking on ruefully 
at the execution. 

4 St. Bartholomew. On the night of Aug. 23, 1572 Admiral Coligny, 
the Huguenot leader, was murdered in Paris, and a general massacre 
of the Huguenots ensued. Over 30,000 Protestants were slaughtered 
throughout France. 




20 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


While this cry was at the loudest, the people were 
surprised by the well-known figure of Governor 
Bradstreet himself, a patriarch of nearly ninety, 
who appeared on the elevated steps of a door, and, 
5 with characteristic mildness, besought them to 
submit to the constituted authorities. 

“My children,” concluded this venerable person, 
“do nothing rashly. Cry not aloud, but pray for 
the welfare of New England, and expect patiently 
10wliat the Lord will do in this matter! ” 

The event was soon to be decided. All this time. 

/ 

the roll of the drum had been approaching through 
Cornhill, louder and deeper, till with reverberations 
from house to house, and the regular tramp of 
15 martial footsteps, it burst into the street. A 
double rank of soldiers made their appearance, 
occupying the whole breadth of the passage, with 
shouldered matchlocks, and matches burning, so 
as to present a row of fires in the dusk. Their 
20 steady march was like the progress of a machine, 
that would roll irresistibly over everything in its 
way. Next, moving slowly, with a confused clatter 


of hoofs on the pavement, rode a party of mounted 
gentlemen, the central figure being Sir Edmund 
25 Andros, elderly, but erect and soldier-like. Those 
around him were his favorite councillors, and the 
bitterest foes of New England. At his right hand 
lode Edward Randolph, our arch-enemy, that 
“blasted wretch,” as Cotton Mather calls him, who 


23 Edward Randolph. See Edward Randolph’s Portrait ” p_ 

“0 one 








THE GRAY CHAMPION 


21 


achieved the downfall of our ancient government, 
and was followed with a sensible curse, through 
life and to his grave. On the other side was Bulli- 
vant, scattering jests and mockery as he rode 
along. Dudley came behind, with a downcast look, 5 
dreading, as well as he might, to meet the indig¬ 
nant gaze of the people, who beheld him, their only 
countryman by birth, among the oppressors of his 
native land. The captain of a frigate in the har¬ 
bor, and two or three civil officers under the Crown, 10 
were also there. But the figure which most at¬ 
tracted the public eye, and stirred up the deepest 
feeling, was the Episcopal Clergyman of King’s 
Chapel, riding haughtily among the magistrates in 
his priestly vestments, the fitting representative of 15 
prelacy and persecution, the union of Church and 
State, and all those abominations which had driv¬ 
en the Puritans to the wilderness. Another guard 
of soldiers, in double rank, brought up the rear. 


3 Dr. Bullivant. “Among a people where so few possessed or were 
allowed to exercise the art of extracting the mirth which lies hidden 
like latent caloric in almost everything, a gay apothecary, such as Dr. 
Bullivant, must have beenaphenomenon. 

“James II. during four years of his despotic reign revoked the char¬ 
ters of the American Colonies, arrogated the appointment of their 
magistrates and annulled all those legal and prescriptive rights which 
had hitherto constituted them nearly independent states. Among the 
foremost advocates of the royal usurpations was Dr. Bullivant. 
Gifted with a smart and ready intellect, busy and bold, he acquired 
great influence in the new government, and assisted Sir Edmund An¬ 
dros, Edward Randolph, and five or six others, to browbeat the council 
and misrule the northern provinces according to their pleasure.”— 
Hawthorne. 

5 Joseph Dudley ( 1647 - 1720 ). In 1686 Dudley had been appointed Presi¬ 
dent of New England. 



22 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


The whole scene was a picture of the condition of 
New England, and its moral, the deformity of any 
government that does not grow out of the nature 
of things and the character of the people. On one 
5 side the religious multitude, with their sad visages 
and dark attire, and on the other, the group of 
despotic rulers, with the High-Churchman in the 
midst, and here and there a crucifix at their bos¬ 
oms, all magnificently clad, flushed with wine, 
10 proud of unjust authority, and scoffing at the uni¬ 
versal groan. And the mercenary soldiers, waiting 
but the word to deluge the street with blood, 
sliow r ed the only means by which obedience could 
be secured. 

15 “0 Lord of Hosts,” cried a voice among the 

crowd, “ provide a Champion for thy people! ” 

This ejaculation w^as loudly uttered, and served 
as a herald's cry, to introduce a remarkable per¬ 
sonage. The crowd had rolled back, and were now 
20 huddled together nearly at the extremity of the 
street, w*hile the soldiers had advanced no more 
than a third of its length. The intervening space 
was empty,—a paved solitude, between lofty edi¬ 
fices, which threw 7 almost a twilight shadow over 
25 it. Suddenly, there w r as seen the figure of an an¬ 
cient man, w r ho seemed to have emerged from 
among the people, and w 7 as walking by himself 
along the centre of the street, to confront the 
armed band. He wore the old Puritan dress, a dark 
30 cloak and a steeple-crowmed hat, in the fashion of 
at least fifty years before, with a heavy sw 7 ord 



THE GRAY CHAMPION 


28 


upon his thigh, but a staff in his hand to assist the 
tremulous gait of age. 

When at some distance from the multitude, the 
old man turned slowly round, displaying a face of 
antique majesty, rendered doubly venerable by the 
hoary beard that descended on his breast. He 
made a gesture at once of encouragement and 
warning, then turned again, and resumed his way. 

“ Who is this gray'patriarch ? ” asked the young 
men of their sires. 

“ Who is this venerable brother? ” asked the old 
men among themselves. 

But none could make reply. The fathers of the 
people, those of fourscore years and upwards, were 
disturbed, deeming it strange that they should for¬ 
get one of such evident authority, whom they must 
have known in their early days, the associate of 
Winthrop, and all the old councillors, giving laws, 
and making prayers, and leading them against 
the savage. The elderly men ought to have remem¬ 
bered him, too, with locks as gray in their youth 
as their own were now. And the young! How 
could he have passed so utterly from their memo¬ 
ries,—that hoary sire, the relic of long-departed 
times, whose awful benediction had surely been 
bestowed on their uncovered heads, in childhood ? 

“Whence did he come? What is his purpose? 
Who can this old man be? ” whispered the wonder¬ 
ing crowd. 

i8 John Winthrop (1588-1649), sailed for America with the first Massa¬ 
chusetts colonists as Governor in 1630 . 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 




24 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


Meanwhile, the venerable stranger, staff in hand, 
was pursuing his solitary walk along the centre of 
the street. As he drew near the advancing soldiers, 
and as the roll of their drum came full upon his 
5 ear, the old man raised himself to a loftier mien, 
while the decrepitude of age seemed to fall from his 
shoulders, leaving him in gray but unbroken dig¬ 
nity. Now, he marched onward with a warrior’s 
step, keeping time to the military music. Thus the 
10 aged form advanced on one side, and the whole 
parade of soldiers and magistrates on the other, 
till, when scarcely twenty yards remained between, 
the old man grasped his staff by the middle, and 
held it before him like a leader’s truncheon. 

. 15 “ Stand ! ” cried he. 

The eye, the face and attitude of command; the 
solemn, yet warlike peal of that voice, fit either to 
rule a host in the battle-field or be raised to God in 
prayer, were irresistible. At the old man’s word 
20 and outstretched arm, the roll of the drum was 
hushed at once, and the advancing line stood still. 
A tremulous enthusiasm seized upon the multitude. 
That stately form, combining the leader and the 
saint, so gray, so dimly seen, in such an ancient 
25 garb, could only belong to some old champion of 
the righteous cause, whom the oppressor’s drum 
had summoned from his grave. They raised a shout 
of awe and exultation, and looked for the deliver¬ 
ance of New England. 

30 The Governor, and the gentlemen of his party, 
perceiving themselves brought to an unexpected 


THE GRAY CHAMPION 


25 


stand, rode hastily forward, as if they would have 
pressed their snorting and affrighted horses right 
against the hoary apparition. He, however, 
blenched not a step, but glancing his severe eye 
round the group, which half encompassed him, at 
last bent it sternly on Sir Edmund Andros. One 
would have thought that the dark old man 
was chief ruler there, and that the Governor 
and Council, with soldiers at their back, represent¬ 
ing the whole power and authority of the Crown, 
had no alternative but obedience. 

“ What does this old fellow here? ” cried Edward 
Kandolph, fiercely. “ On, Sir Edmund ! Bid the 
soldiers forward, and give the dotard the same 
choice that you give all his countrymen,—to stand 
aside or be trampled onl” 

“ Nay, nay, let us show respect to the good grand- 
sire,” said Bullivant, laughing. “ See you not, he 
is some old round-headed dignitary, who hath lain 
asleep these thirtj 7 years, and knows nothing of 
the change of times ? Doubtless, he thinks to put 
us down with a proclamation in Old Noll’s name!” 

“Are you mad, old man?” demanded Sir Ed¬ 
mund Andros, in loud and harsh tones. “How 
dare you stay the march of King James’s^Gov- 
ernor ? ” 


19 Round-headed. The Puritans with their closely clipped hair were 
derisively called ‘’Round-heads” by the Cavaliers who wore their hair 
in long love locks over their shoulders. 

22 old Noll. A contemptuous epithet applied to Oliver Cromwell by 
the Cavaliers. 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 



26 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


“I have stayed the march of a king himself, ere 
now,” replied the gray figure, with stern compo¬ 
sure. “I am here, Sir Governor, because the cry 
of an oppressed people hath disturbed me in my 
5 secret place; and beseeching this favor earnestly of 
the Lord, it was vouchsafed me to appear once again 
on earth, in the good old cause of his saints. And 
what speak ye of James? There is no longer a 
Popish tyrant on the throne of England, and by 
10 to-morrow noon his name shall be a by-word in 
this very street, where ye would make it a word of 
terror. Back, thou that wast a Governor, back! 
With this night thv power is ended,—to-morrow, 
the prison!—back, lest I foretell the scaffold! ” 

15 The people had been drawing nearer and nearer, 
and drinking in the words of their champion, who 
spoke in accents long disused, like one unaccus¬ 
tomed to converse, except with the dead of many 
years ago. But his voice stirred their souls. They 
20 confronted the soldiers, not wholly without arms, 
and ready to convert the very stones of the street 
into deadly weapons. Sir Edmund Andros looked 
at the old man; then he cast his hard and cruel 
eye over the multitude, and beheld them burning 
25 with that lurid wrath, so difficult to kindle or to 
quench; and again he fixed his gaze on the aged 
form, which stood obscurely in an open space, where 
neither friend nor foe had thrust himself. What 
were his thoughts, he uttered no word which might 
30 discover. But whether the oppressor were over¬ 
awed by the Gray Champion’s look, or perceived 



THE GRAY CHAMPION 


27 


his peril in the threatening attitude of the people, 
it is certain that he gave back, and ordered his sol¬ 
diers to commence a slow and guarded retreat. 
Before another sunset, the Governor, and all that 
rode so proudly with him, were prisoners, and long 
ere it was known that James had abdicated, King- 
William was proclaimed throughout New England. 

But where was the Gray Champion ? Some re¬ 
ported, that when the troops had gone from King 
Street, and the people were thronging tumultu¬ 
ously in their rear, Bradstreet, the aged Governor, 
was seen to embrace a form more aged than his 
own. Others soberly affirmed, that while they 
marvelled at the venerable grandeur of his aspect, 
the old man had faded from their eyes, melting 
slowly into the hues of twilight, till, where he stood, 
there was an empty space, but all agreed that the 
hoary shape was gone. The men of that generation 
watched for his reappearance, in sunshine and in 
twilight, but never saw him more, nor knew when 
his funeral passed, nor where his gravestone was. 

And who was the Gray Champion? Perhaps 
his name might be found in the records of that stern 
Court of Justice, which passed a sentence, too 
mighty for the age, but glorious in all after times, 
for its humbling lesson to the monarch and its high 
example to the subject. I have heard, that when¬ 
ever the descendants of the Puritans are to show 

24 Court of Justice. The Court which tried Charles I. Two of the 
members of this Court, Goffe and Whalley, fled to America at the Res¬ 
toration and remained there in hiding. Goffe reappeared at the Indian 
attack on Hadley in 1675, and helped repulse the savages. 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 





28 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


the spirit of their sires, the old man appears again. 
When eighty years had passed, he walked once 
more in King Street. Five years later, in the twi¬ 
light of an April morning, he stood on the green, 
5 beside the meeting-house, at Lexington, where now 
the obelisk of granite, with a slab of slate inlaid, 
commemorates the first fallen of the Revolution. 
And when our fathers were toiling at the breast¬ 
work on Bunker’s Hill, all through that night the 
10 old warrior walked his rounds. Long, long may 
it be, ere he comes again! His hour is one of dark¬ 
ness, and adversity, and peril. But should domes¬ 
tic tyranny oppress us, or the invader’s step 
pollute our soil, still may the Gray Champion come, 
15 for he is the type of New England’s hereditary 
spirit, and his shadowy march, on the eve of dan¬ 
ger, must ever be the pledge that New England’s 
sons will vindicate their ancestrv. 

e/ 

2 when eighty years had passed. At the time of the Boston Mas¬ 
sacre. 



THE MINISTER’S BLACK VEIL 

A PARABLE 1 


The sexton stood in the porch of Milford meet¬ 
ing-house, pulling lustily at the bell-rope. The old 
people of the village came stooping along the 
street. Children with bright faces tripped merrily 
beside their parents, or mimicked a graver gait, in 
the conscious dignity of their Sunday clothes. 
Spruce bachelors looked sidelong at the pretty 
maidens, and fancied that the Sabbath sunshine 
made them prettier than on week-days. When the 
throng had mostly streamed into the porch, the 
sexton began to toll the bell, keeping his eye on the 
Reverend Mr. Hooper’s door. The first glimpse of 
the clergyman’s figure was the signal for the bell 
to cease its summons. 

“But what has good Parson Hooper got upon 
his face?” cried the sexton, in astonishment. 

All within hearing immediately turned about, 
and beheld the semblance of Mr. Hooper, pacing 
slowly his meditative way towards the meeting¬ 
house. With one accord they started, expressing 

1 Another clergyman in New England, Mr. Joseph Moody, of York. 
Maine who died about eighty years since, made himself remarkable 
by the same eccentricity that is here related of the Reverend Mr. 
Hooper. In his case, however, the symbol had a different import. In 
early life he had accidentally killed a beloved friend: and from that 
day till the hour of his own death, he hid his face from men. 

29 


5 

10 

15 

20 



30 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


more wonder than if some strange minister were 
coming to dust the cushions of Mr. Hooper’s 
pulpit. 

“ Are you sure it is our parson? ” inquired Good- 
5 man Gray of the sexton. 

“Of a certainty it is good Mr. Hooper,” replied 
the sexton. “ He was to have exchanged pulpits 
with Parson Shute, of Westbury; but Parson 
Shute sent to excuse himself yesterday, being to 
10 preach a funeral sermon.” 

The cause of so much amazement may appear 
sufficiently slight. Mr. Hooper, a gentlemanly per¬ 
son, of about thirty, though still a bachelor, was 
dressed with due clerical neatness, as if a careful 
15 wife had starched his band and brushed the weekly 
dust from his Sunday’s garb. There was but one 
thing remarkable in his appearance. Swathed 
about his forehead, and hanging down over his 
face so low as to be shaken by his breath, Mr. 
20 Hooper had on a black veil. On a nearer view, it 
seemed to consist of two folds of crape, which en¬ 
tirely concealed his features, except the mouth and 
chin, but probably did not intercept his sight, far¬ 
ther than to give a darkened aspect to all living- 
25 and inanimate things. With this gloomy shade 
before him, good Mr. Hooper walked onward, at a 
slow and quiet pace, stooping somewhat, and look¬ 
ing on the ground, as is customary with abstracted 
men, yet nodding kindly to those of his parishion- 
soers who still waited on the meeting-house steps. 
But so wonder-struck were they, that his greeting 
hardly met with a return. 


THE MINISTER'S BLACK VEIL 


31 


“I can't really feel as if good Mr. Hooper’s face 
was behind that piece of crape,” said the sexton. 

“I don’t like it,” muttered an old woman, as 
she hobbled into the meeting-house. “He has 
changed himself into something awful, only by 5 
hiding his face.” 

“Our parson has gone mad!” cried Goodman 
Gray, following him across the threshold. 

A rumor of some unaccountable phenomenon 
had preceded Mr. Hooper into the meeting-house, 10 
and set all the congregation astir. Few could re¬ 
frain from twisting their heads towards the door; 
many stood upright, and turned directly about; 
while several little boys clambered upon the seats, 
and came down again with a terrible racket. There 15 
was a general bustle, a rustling of the women’s 
gowns and shuffling of the men’s feet, greatly at 
variance with that hushed repose which should at¬ 
tend the entrance of the minister. But Mr. Hooper 
appeared not to notice the perturbation of his peo -20 
pie. He entered with an almost noiseless step, bent 
his head mildly to the pews on each side, and bowed 
as he passed his oldest parishioner, a white-haired 
great-grandsire, who occupied an arm-chair in the 
centre of the aisle. It was strange to observe how 25 
slowly this venerable man became conscious of 
something singular in the appearance of his pastor. 
He seemed not fully to partake of the prevailing 
wonder, till Mr. Hooper had ascended the stairs, 
and showed himself in the pulpit, face to face with 30 
his congregation, except for the black veil. That 


32 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


mysterious emblem was never once withdrawn. 
It shook with his measured breath as it gave out 
the psalm; it threw its obscurity between him' and 
the holy page, as he read the Scriptures; and while 
5 he prayed, the veil lay heavily on his uplifted coun¬ 
tenance. Did he seek to hide it from the dread Be¬ 
ing whom he was addressing? 

Such was the effect of this simple piece of crape, 
that more than one woman of delicate nerves was 
10 forced to leave the meeting-house. Yet perhaps 
the pale-faced congregation was almost as fearful 
a sight to the minister, as his black veil to them. 

Mr. Hooper had the reputation of a good preach¬ 
er, but not an energetic one: he strove to win his 
15 people heavenward by mild, persuasive influences, 
rather than to drive them thither by the thunders 
of the Word. The sermon which he now delivered 
was marked bv the same characteristics of stvle 
and manner as the general series of his pulpit ora- 
20 tory. But there was something, either in the sen¬ 
timent of the discourse itself, or in the imagination 
of the auditors, which made it greatly the most 
pow erful eff ort that they had ever heard from their 
pastor’s lips. It was tinged, rather more darkly 
25 than usual, with the gentle gloom of Mr. Hooper’s 
temperament. The subject had reference to secret 
sin, and those sad mysteries which we hide from 
our nearest and clearest, and would fain conceal 
from our own consciousness, even forgetting that 
30 the Omniscient can detect them. A subtle pow T er 
w r as breathed into his words. Each member of the 


THE MINISTER'S BLACK VEIL 


33 


congregation, the most innocent girl and the man 
of hardened breast, felt as if the preacher had crept 
upon them, behind his awful veil, and discovered 
their hoarded iniquity of deed or thought. Many 
spread their clasped hands on their bosoms. There 5 
was nothing terrible in what Mr. Hooper said; at 
least, no violence; and yet, with every tremor of 
his melancholy voice, the hearers quaked. An un¬ 
sought pathos came hand in hand with awe. So 
sensible were the audience of some unwonted attri-10 
bute in their minister, that they longed for a 
breath of wind to blow aside the veil, almost be¬ 
lieving that a stranger’s visage would be discov¬ 
ered, though the form, gesture and voice were those 
of Mr. Hooper. 15 

At the close of the services, the people hurried 
out with indecorous confusion, eager to communi¬ 
cate their pent-up amazement, and conscious of 
lighter spirits, the moment they lost sight of the 
the black veil. Some gathered in little circles, hud-20 
died closely together, with their mouths all whis¬ 
pering in the centre ; some went homeward alone, 
wrapped in silent meditation; some talked loudly, 
and profaned the Sabbath day with ostentatious 
laughter. A few shook their sagacious heads, in- 25 
timating that they could penetrate the mystery; 
while one or two affirmed that there was no mys¬ 
tery at all, but only that Mr. Hooper’s eyes were 
so weakened by the midnight lamp, as to require 
a shade. After a brief interval, forth came good 30 
Mr. Hooper also, in the rear of his flock. Turning 


34 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


liis veiled face from one group to another, he paid 
due reverence to the hoary heads, saluted the mid¬ 
dle-aged with kind dignity, as their friend and 
spiritual guide, greeted the young with mingled 
5 authority and love, and laid his hands on 
the little children’s heads to bless them. Such 
was always his custom on the Sabbath day. 
Strange and bewildered looks repaid him for his 
courtesy. None, as on former occasions, aspired 
10to the honor of walking by their pastor’s side. 
Old Squire Saunders, doubtless by an accidental 
lapse of memory, neglected to invite Mr. Hooper 
to his table, where the good clergyman had been 
wont to bless the food, almost every Sunday since 
15 his settlement. He returned, therefore, to the par¬ 
sonage, and, at the moment of closing the door, 
was observed to look back upon the people, all of 
whom had their eyes fixed upon the minister. A 
sad smile gleamed faintly from beneath the black 
20 veil, and flickered about his mouth, glimmering as 
he disappeared. 

“How strange,” said a lady, “that a simple 
black veil, such as any woman might wear on her 
bonnet, should become such a terrible thing on Mr. 
25 Hooper’s face! ” 

“ Something must surely be amiss with Mr. Hoop¬ 
er’s intellects,” observed her husband, the physician 
of the village. “But the strangest part of the 
affair is the effect of this vagary, even on a sober- 
30 minded man like myself. The black veil, though it 
covers only our pastor’s face, throws its influence 



THE MINISTER’S BLACK VEIL 


35 


over his whole person, and makes him ghost-like 
from head to foot. Do you not feel it so? ” 

“ Truly do I,” replied the lady; “ and I would not 
be alone with him for the world. I wonder he is 
not afraid to be alone with himself! ” 

“ Men sometimes are so,” said her husband. 

The afternoon service was attended with similar 
circumstances. At its conclusion, the bell tolled 
for the funeral of a young lady. The relatives and 
friends were assembled in the house, and the more 
distant acquaintances stood about the door, speak¬ 
ing of the good qualities of the deceased, when 
their talk was interrupted by the appearance of 
Mr. Hooper, still covered with his black veil. It 
was now an appropriate emblem. The clergyman 
stepped into the room where the corpse was laid, 
and bent over the coffin, to take a last farewell of 
his deceased parishioner. As he stooped, the veil 
hung straight down from his forehead, so that, if 
her eyelids had not been closed forever, the dead 
maiden might have seen his face. Could Mr. Hoop¬ 
er be fearful of her glance, that he so hastily caught 
back the black veil ? A person, who watched the 
interview between the dead and living scrupled not 
to affirm, that, at the instant when the clergy¬ 
man’s features were disclosed, the corpse had 
slightly shuddered, rustling the shroud and muslin 
cap, though the countenance retained the compo¬ 
sure of death. A superstitious old woman was the 
only witness of this prodigy. From the coffin Mr. 
Hooper passed into the chamber of the mourners, 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 

30 


36 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


and thence to the head of the staircase, to make 
the funeral prayer. It was a tender and heart- 
dissolving prayer, full of sorrow, yet so imbued 
with celestial hopes, that the music of a heavenly 
5 harp, swept by the fingers of the dead, seemed 
faintly to be heard among the saddest accents of 
the minister. The people trembled, though they 
but darkly understood him when he prayed that 
they, and himself, and all the mortal race, might 
10 be ready, as he trusted this young maiden had 
been, for the dreadful hour that should snatch the 
veil from their faces. The bearers went heavily 
forth, and the mourners followed, saddening all the 
street, with the dead before them, and Mr. Hooper 
15 in his black veil behind. 

“ Why do you look back? ” said one in the pro¬ 
cession to his partner. 

“I had a fancy,” replied she, “that the minister 
and the maiden’s spirit were walking hand in 
20 hand.” 

“And so had I, at the same moment,” said the 
other. 

That night, the handsomest couple in Milford 
village were to be joined in wedlock. Though reck- 
25 oned a melancholy man, Mr. Hooper had a placid 
cheerfulness for such occasions, which often excited 
a sympathetic smile, where livelier merriment would 
have been thrown away. There was no quality of 
his disposition which made him more beloved than 
30 this. The company at the wedding awaited his 
arrival with impatience, trusting that the strange 


THE MINISTER'S BLACK VEIL 


37 


awe, which had gathered over him throughout the 
day, would not be dispelled. But such was not 
the result. When Mr. Hooper came, the first thing 
that their eyes rested on was the same horrible 
black veil, which had added deeper gloom to the 5 
funeral, and could portend nothing but evil to the 
wedding. Such was its immediate effect on the 
guests, that a cloud seemed to have rolled duskily 
from beneath the black crape, and dimmed the light 
of the candles. The bridal pair stood up before 10 
the minister. But the bride’s cold fingers quivered 
in the tremulous hand of the bridegroom, and her 
death-like paleness caused a whisper that the maid¬ 
en who had been buried a few hours before was 
come from her grave to be married. If ever an-15 
other wedding was so dismal, it was that famous 
one where they tolled the wedding knell. After per¬ 
forming the ceremony, Mr. Hooper raised a glass 
of wine to his lips, wishing happiness to the new 
married couple, in a strain of mild pleasantry, that 20 
ought to have brightened the features of the guests, 
like a cheerful gleam from the hearth. At that in¬ 
stant, catching a glimpse of his figure in the look¬ 
ing-glass, the black veil involved his own spirit 
in the horror with which it overwhelmed all others. 25 
His frame shuddered,—his lips grew white,—he spilt 
the untasted wine upon the carpet,—and rushed 


it The Wedding Knell. Another gloomy story of Hawthorne’s bears 
this title. It describes the wedding of an elderly couple at which the 
bridegroom appeared clad in a shroud, while the church bell tolled as 
for a funeral. 



38 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


forth into the darkness. For the Earth, too, had 
on her Black Veil. 

The next day, the whole village of Milford talked 
of little else than Parson Hooper’s black veil. 

5 That, and the mystery concealed behind it, supplied 
a topic for discussion between acquaintances meet¬ 
ing in the street and good women gossiping at 
their open windows. It was the first item of news 
that the tavern-keeper told to his guests. The 
10 children babbled of it on their way to school. One 
imitative little imp covered his face with an old 
black handkerchief, thereby so affrighting his play¬ 
mates that the panic seized himself, and he well- 
nigh lost his wits by his own waggery. 

15 It was remarkable that, of all the busvbodies and 
impertinent people in the parish, not one ventured 
to put the plain question to Mr. Hooper, wherefore 
he did this thing. Hitherto, whenever there ap¬ 
peared the slightest call for such interference, he 
20 had never lacked advisers, nor shown himself ad¬ 
verse to be guided by their judgment. If he erred 
at all, it was by so painful a degree of self-distrust, 
that even the mildest censure would lead him to 
consider an indifferent action as a crime. Yet, 
25 though so well acquainted with this amiable weak¬ 
ness, no individual among hisjparishioners chose to 
make the black veil a subject of friendly remons¬ 
trance. There was a feeling of dread, neither plainly 
confessed nor carefully concealed, which caused each 
30 to shift the responsibility upon another, till at 
length it was found expedient to send a deputation 


THE MINISTER'S BLACK VEIL 


39 


of the church, in order to deal with Mr. Hooper 

about the mystery, before it should grow into a 

scandal. Never did an embassy so ill discharge its 

duties. The minister received them with friendly 

«■ 

courtesy, but became silent, after they were seated, 5 
leaving to his visiters the whole burden of intro¬ 
ducing their important business. The topic, it 
might be supposed, was obvious enough. There 
was the black veil, swathed round Mr. Hooper’s 
forehead, and concealing every feature above hisiG 
placid mouth, on which, at times, they could per¬ 
ceive the glimmering of a melancholy smile. But 
that piece of crape, to their imagination, seemed 
to hang down before his heart, the symbol of a 
fearful secret between him and them. Were the 15 
veil but cast aside, they might speak freely of it, 
but not till then. Thus they sat a considerable 
time, speechless, confused, and shrinking uneasily 
from Mr. Hooper’s eye, which they felt to be fixed 
upon them with an invisible glance. Finally, the 20 
deputies returned abashed to their constituents, 
pronouncing the matter too weighty to be handled, 
except by a council of the churches, if, indeed, it 
might not require a general synod. 

But there was one person in the village, unap- 25 
palled by the awe with which the black veil had 
impressed all beside herself. When the deputies re¬ 
turned without an explanation,or even venturing to 
demand one, she, with the calm energy of her char¬ 
acter, determined to chase away the strange cloud 30 
that appeared to be settling round Mr. Hooper, 


40 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


every moment more darkly than before. As liis 
plighted wife, it should be her privilege to know 
what the black veil concealed. At the minister’s 
first visit, therefore, she entered upon the subject, 
5 with a direct simplicity which made the task easier 
both for him and her. After he had seated himself, 
she fixed her eyes steadfastly upon the veil, but 
could discern nothing of the dreadful gloom that 
had so overawed the multitude; it was but a dou- 
loble fold of crape, hanging down from his forehead 
to his mouth, and slightly stirring with his breath. 

“No,” said she aloud, and smiling, “there is 
nothing terrible in this piece of crape, except that 
it hides a face which I am always glad to look 
15 upon. Come, good sir, let the sun shine from be¬ 
hind the cloud. First lay aside your black veil: 
then tell me why you put it on.” 

Mr. Hooper’s smile glimmered faintly. 

“There is an hour to come,” said he, “when all 
20 of us shall cast aside our veils. Take it not amiss, 
beloved friend, if I wear this piece of crape till 
then.” 

“Your words are a mystery too,” returned the 
young lady. “Take away the veil from them, at 
25 least.” 

“Elizabeth, I will,” said he, “so far as my vow 
may suffer me. Know, then, this veil is a type and 
a symbol, and I am bound to wear it ever, both in 
light and darkness, in solitude and before the gaze 
30 of multitudes, and as with strangers, so with my 
familiar friends. No mortal eye will see it with- 


THE MINISTER'S BLACK VEIL 


41 


drawn. This dismal shade must separate me from 
the world: even you, Elizabeth, can never come 
behind it! ” 

“ What grievous affliction hath befallen you,” 
she earnestly inquired, “that you should thus 
darken your eyes forever? ” 

“If it be a sign of mourning,” replied Mr. Hoop¬ 
er, “I, perhaps, like most other mortals, have sor¬ 
rows dark enough to be typified by a black veil.” 

“ But what if the world will not believe that it is 
the type of an innocent sorrow? ”urged Elizabeth. 
“Beloved and respected as you are, there may be 
whispers, that you hide your face under the con¬ 
sciousness of secret sin. For the sake of your holy 
office, do awav this scandal! ” 

The color rose into her cheeks as she intimated 
the nature of the rumors that were already abroad 
in the village. But Mr. Hooper’s mildness did not 
forsake him. He even smiled again,—that same 
sad smile, which always appeared like a faint glim¬ 
mering of light, proceeding from the obscurity 
beneath the veil. 

“If I hide my face for sorrow, there is cause 
enough,” he merely replied; and if I cover it for 
secret sin, what mortal might not do the same? ” 
And with this gentle, but unconquerable obsti¬ 
nacy did he resist all her entreaties. At length 
Elizabeth sat silent. For a few moments she 
appeared lost in thought, considering, probably, 
what new methods might be tried to withdraw 
her lover from so dark a fantasy, which, if it had 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 

30 


42 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


no other meaning was perhaps a symptom of 
mental disease. Though of a firmer character 
than his own, the tears rolled down her cheeks. 
But, in an instant, as it were, a new feeling took 
5 the place of sorrow; her eyes were fixed insensibly 
on the black veil, when, like a sudden twilight in 
the air, its terrors fell around her. She arose, and 
stood trembling before him. 

“And do you feel it then at last?” said he, 
10 mournfully. 

She made no reply, but covered her eyes with her 
hand, and turned to leave the room. He rushed 
forward and caught her arm. 

“Have patience with me, Elizabeth!” cried he, 
15 passionately. “ Do not desert me, though this veil 
must be between us here on earth. Be mine, and 
hereafter there shall be no veil over my face, no 
darkness between our souls! It is but a mortal 
veil,—it is not for eternity! Oh! you know not how 
20 lonely I am, and hoiv frightened, to be alone be¬ 
hind my black veil! Do not leave me in this mis¬ 
erable obscurity forever! ” 

“ Lift the veil but once, and look me in the face,” 
said she. 

25 “ Never! It cannot be! ” replied Mr. Hooper. 

“Then, farewell! ” said Elizabeth. 

She withdrew her arm from his grasp, and slowly 
departed, pausing at the door, to give one long, 
shuddering gaze, that seemed almost to penetrate 
30 the mystery of the black veil. But, even amid his 
grief, Mr. Hooper smiled to think that only a ma- 


THE MINISTER'S BLACK VEIL 


43 


terial emblem had separated him from happiness, 
though the horrors which it shadowed forth must 
be drawn darkly between the fondest of lovers. 

From that time no attempts were made to re¬ 
move Mr. Hooper’s black veil, or by a direct appeal, 
to discover the secret which it was supposed to 
hide. By persons who claimed a superiority to 
popular prejudice, it was reckoned merely an ec¬ 
centric whim, such as often mingles with the sober 
actions of men otherwise rational, and tinges them 
all with its own semblance of insanity. But with 
the multitude, good Mr. Hooper was irreparably 
a bugbear. He could not walk the street with any 
piece of mind, so conscious was he that the gentle 
and timid would turn aside to avoid him, and that 
others would make it a point of hardihood to 
throw themselves in his way. The impertinence of 
the latter class compelled him to give up his cus¬ 
tomary walk, at sunset, to the burial-ground; for 
when he leaned pensively over the gate, there would 
always be faces behind the gravestones, peeping at 
his black veil. A fable went the rounds, that the 
stare of the dead people drove him thence. It 
grieved him, to the very depth of his kind heart, 
to observe how the children fled from his approach, 
breaking up their merriest sports, while his melan¬ 
choly figure was yet afar off. Their instinctive 
dread caused him to feel, more strangely than 
aught else, that a preternatural horror was inter¬ 
woven with the threads of the black crape. In 
truth, his own antipathy to the veil was known to 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 

30 


44 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


be so great, that he never willingly passed before a 
mirror, nor stooped to drink at a still fountain, 
lest, in its peaceful bosom, he should be affrighted 
by himself. This was what, gave plausibility to 
5 the whispers, that Mr. Hooper’s conscience tortured 
him for some great crime too horrible to be entirely 
concealed, or otherwise than so obscurely intima¬ 
ted. Thus, from beneath the black veil, there rolled 
a cloud into the sunshine, an ambiguity of sin or 
10 sorrow, which enveloped the poor minister, so that 
love or sympathy could never reach him. It was 
said, that ghost and fiend consorted with him 
there. With self-shudderings and outward terrors, 
he walked continually in its shadow, groping darkly 
15 within his own soul, or gazing through a medium 
that saddened the whole world. Even the lawless 
wind, it was believed, respected his dreadful secret, 
and never blew aside the veil. But still good Mr. 
Hooper sadly smiled at the pale visages of the 
20 worldly throng as he passed by. 

Among all its bad influences, the black veil had 
the one desirable effect, of making its wearer a very 
efficient clergyman. By the aid of his mysterious 
emblem—for there was no other apparent cause— 
25 he became a man of awful pow r er, over souls that 
were in agony for sin. His converts alwavs re- 
garded him with a dread peculiar to themselves, 
affirming, though but figuratively, that, before he 
brought them to celestial light, they had been with 
30him behind the black veil. Its gloom, indeed, en¬ 
abled him to sympathize with all dark affections. 


THE MINISTER’S BLACK VEIL 


45 


Dying sinners cried aloud for Mr. Hooper, and 
would not yield their breath till he appeared; 
though ever, as he stooped to whisper consolation, 
they shuddered at the veiled face so near their own. 
Such were the terrors of the black veil, even when 
Death had bared his visage! Strangers came long- 
distances to attend service at his church, with the 
mere idle purpose of gazing at his figure, because it 
was forbidden them to behold his face. But many 
were made to quake ere they departed! Once, 
during Governor Belcher’s administration, Mr. 
Hooper was appointed to preach the election 
sermon. Covered with his black veil, he stood 
before the chief magistrate, the council, and the 
representatives, and wrought so deep an impres¬ 
sion, that the legislative measures of that year 
were characterized by all the gloom and piety of 
our earliest ancestral sway. 

In this manner Mr. Hooper spent a long life, irre¬ 
proachable in outward act, yet shrouded in dismal 
suspicions; kind and loving, though unloved, and 
dimly feared; a man apart from men, shunned in 
their health and joy, but ever summoned to their 
aid in mortal anguish. As years wore on, shed¬ 
ding their snows above his sable veil, he acquired a 
name throughout the New England churches, and 
they called him Father Hooper. Nearly all his 
parishioners, who were of mature age when he was 
settled, had been borne away by many a funeral: 
he had one congregation in the church, and a more 
crowded one in the churchyard; and having 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 

30 


46 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


wrought so late into the evening, and done his 
work so well, it was now good Father Hooper’s 
turn to rest. 

Several persons were visible by the shaded candle- 
5 light, in the death chamber of the old clergyman. 
Natural connections he had none. But there was 
the decorously grave, though unmoved physician, 
seeking only to mitigate the last pangs of the 
patient whom he could not save. There were the 
10 deacons, and other eminently pious members of his 
church. There, also, was the Reverend Mr. Clark, 
of Westbury, a young and zealous divine, who had 
ridden in haste to pray by the bedside of the expir¬ 
ing minister. There was the nurse, no hired hand- 
15 maiden of death, but one whose calm affection had 
endured thus long in secrecy, in solitude, amid the 
chill of age, and would not perish, even at the dying 
hour. Who, but Elizabeth! And there lay the 
hoary head of good Father Hooper upon the 
20 death-pillow, with the black veil still swathed 
about his brow, and reaching down over his face, 
so that each more difficult gasp of his faint breath 
caused it to stir. All through life that piece of 
crape had hung between him and the world : it had 
25 separated him from cheerful brotherhood and 
woman’s love, and kept him in that saddest of all 
prisons, his own heart; and still it lay upon his 
face, as if to deepen the gloom of his darksome 
chamber, and shade him from the sunshine of 
eternitv. 





THE MINISTER’S BLACK VEIL 


47 


For some time previous, his mind had been con¬ 
fused, wavering doubtfully between the past and 
the present, and hovering forward, as it were, at 
intervals, into the indistinctness of the world to 
come. There had been feverish turns, which tossed 5 
him from side to side, and wore away what little 
strength he had. But in his most convulsive 
struggles, and in the wildest vagaries of his intel¬ 
lect, when no other thought retained its sober 
influence, he still showed an awful solicitude lestio 
the black veil should slip aside. Even if his be¬ 
wildered soul could have forgotten, there was a 
faithful woman at his pillow, who, with averted 
eyes, would have covered that aged face, which she 
had last beheld in the comeliness of manhood. Atis 
lenght the death-stricken old man lay quietly in 
the torpor of mental and bodily exhaustion, with 
an imperceptible pulse, and breath that grew 
fainter and fainter, except when a long, deep, and 
irregular inspiration seemed to prelude the flight20 
of his spirit. 

The minister of Westbury approached the bed¬ 
side. 

“Venerable Father Hooper,” said he, “the 
moment of your release is at hand. Are you ready 25 
for the lifting of the veil, that shuts in time from 
eternity? ” 

Father Hooper at first replied merely by a feeble 
motion of his head; then, apprehensive, perhaps, 
that his meaning might be doubtful, he exerted 30 
himself to speak. 


48 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


“Yea,” said he, in faint accents, “my soul hath 
a patient weariness until that veil be lifted.” 

“And is it fitting,” resumed the Reverend Mr. 
Clark, “that a man so given to prayer, of such a 
5 blameless example, holy in deed and thought, so 
far as mortal judgment may pronounce,—is it fit¬ 
ting that a father in the church should leave a 
shadow on his memory, that may seem to blacken 
a life so pure? I pray you, my venerable brother, 
10 let not this thing be! Suffer us to be gladdened by 
your triumphant aspect, as you go to your re- 
ward. Before the veil of eternity be lifted, let me 
cast aside this black veil from your face. 

And thus speaking, the Rev. Mr. Clark bent for- 
15 ward to reveal the mvstery of so manv years. But, 
exerting a sudden energy, that made all the be¬ 
holders stand aghast, Father Hooper snatched 
both his hands from beneath the bedclothes, and 
pressed them strongly on the black veil, resolute 
20 to struggle, if the minister of Westbury would con¬ 
tend with a dying man. 

“Never! ” cried the veiled clergyman. “ On earth, 
never! ” 

“Dark old man ! ” exclaimed the affrighted min- 
25ister, “with what horrible crime upon your soul 
are you now passing to the judgment? ” 

Father Hooper’s breath heaved ; it rattled in his 
throat; but, with a mighty effort, grasping for¬ 
ward with his hands, he caught hold of life, and 
30 held it back till he should speak. He even raised 
himself in bed; and there he sat, shivering with the 


THE MINISTER’S BLACK VEIL 


49 


arms of death around him, while the black veil 
hung down, awful, at that last moment, in the 
gathered terrors of a lifetime. And yet the faint, 
sad smile, so often there, now seemed to glimmer 
from its obscurity, and linger on Father Hooper’s 
lips. 

“ Why do you tremble at me alone?” cried he, 
turning his veiled face round the circle of pale spec¬ 
tators. “Tremble also at each other! Have men 
avoided me, and women shown no pity, and child¬ 
ren screamed and fled, only for my black veil? 
What, but the mystery which it obscurely typifies, 
has made this piece of crape so awful? When the 
friend shows his inmost heart to his friend; the 
lover to his best beloved ; when man does not 
vainly shrink from the eye of his Creator, loath 
somely treasuring up the secret of his sin ; then 
deem me a monster, for the symbol beneath which 
l have lived, and die! I look around me, and, lo! 
on everv visage a Black Veil! ” 

While his auditors shrank from one another, in 
mutual affright, Father Hooper fell back upon his 
pillow, a veiled corpse, with a faint smile lingering 
on the lips. Still veiled, they laid him in his coffin, 
and a veiled corpse they bore him to the grave. 
The grass of many years has sprung up and with¬ 
ered on that grave, the burial stone is moss-grown, 
and good Mr. Hooper’s face is dust ; but awful is 
still the thought, that it mouldered beneath the 
Black Veil! 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 


THE MAYPOLE OF MERRY MOUNT 


There is an admirable foundation for a philosophic romance, in 
the curious history of the early settlement of Mount Wollaston, or 
Merry Mount. In the slight sketch here attempted, the facts record¬ 
ed on the grave pages of our New England annalists have wrought 
themseves, almost spontaneously, into a sort of allegory. The 
masques, mummeries, and festive customs, described in the text 
are in accordance with the manners of the age. Authority on these 
points may be found in Strutt’s Book of English Sports and Pastimes. 

Bright were the days at Merry Mount, when the 
May-Pole was the banner staff of that gay colony! 
They who reared it, should their banner be tri¬ 
umphant, were to pour sunshine oA T er NeAv Eng- 
5 land's rugged hills,and scatter flower-seeds through¬ 
out the soil. Jollity and gloom were contending 
for an empire. Midsummer eve had come, bringing 
deep verdure to the forest, and roses in her lap, of 
a more vivid hue than the tender buds of Spring. 
10 But May, or her mirthful spirit, dwelt all the year 
round at Merry Mount, sporting with the Summer 
months, and revelling with Autumn, and basking 
in the glow of Winter’s fireside. Through a world 
of toil and care she flitted with a dream-like smile, 
15 and came hither to find a home among the light¬ 
some hearts of Merry Mount. 

i Merry Mount. A small settlement on Hie site of the present town 
of Quincy, Massachusetts, composed of some thirty straggling settlers 
who, repelled by the harshness and gloom of life in the Puritan settle¬ 
ments. led a riotous existence at Merry Mount until the scandal was 
stamped out by John Endicott’in 1628 . 


60 




THE MAY-POLE OF MERRY MOUNT 


51 


Never had the May-Pole been so gayly decked as 
at sunset on midsummer eve. This venerated em¬ 
blem was a pine-tree, which had preserved the 
slender grace of youth, while it equaled the loftiest 
height of the old wood monarchs. From its top 5 
streamed a silken banner, colored like the rainbow. 
Down nearly to the ground, the pole was dressed 
with birchen boughs, and others of the liveliest 
green, and some with silvery leaves, fastened by 
ribbons that fluttered in fantastic knots of twenty 10 
different colors, but no sad ones. Garden flowers 
and blossoms of the wilderness laughed gladly forth 
amid the verdure, so fresh and dewy, that they 
must have grown by magic on that happy pine- 
tree. Where this green and flowery splendor termi-15 
nated, the shaft of the May-Pole was stained with 
the seven brilliant hues of the banner at its top. 
On the lowest green bough hung an abundant 
wreath of roses, some that had been gathered in 
the sunniest spots of the forest, and others, of still 20 
richer blush, whic h the colonists had reared from 
English seed. 0 people of the Golden Age, the 
chief of your husbandry was to raise flowers! 

But what was the wild throng that stood hand 
in hand about the May-Pole? It could not be,25 
that the fauns and nymphs, when driven from their 
classic groves and homes of ancient fable, had 
sought refuge, as all the persecuted did, in the fresh 
woods of the West. These were Gothic monsters, 
though perhaps of Grecian ancestry. On the30 
shoulders of a comely youth uprose the head and 


52 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


branching antlers of a stag; a second, human in 
all other points, had the grim visage of a 
wolf; a third, still with the trunk and limbs of a 
mortal man, showed the beard and horns of a ven- 
6 erable he-goat. There was the likeness of a bear 
erect, brute in all but his hind legs, which were 
adorned with pink silk stockings. And here again, 
almost as wondrous, stood a real bear of the dark 
forest, lending each of his fore-paws to the grasp 
10 of a human hand, and as ready for the dance as 
any in that circle. His inferior nature rose half¬ 
way, to meet his companions as they stooped. 
Other faces wore the similitude of man or woman, 
but distorted or extravagant, with red noses pen- 
15 dulous before their mouths, which seemed of awful 
depth, and stretched from ear to ear in an eternal 
fit of laughter. Here might be seen the Salvage 
Man, well known in heraldry, hairy as a baboon, 
and girdled with green leaves. By his side, a nobler 
20 figure, but still a counterfeit, appeared an Indian 
hunter, with feathery crest and wampun belt. Many 
of this strange company wore foolscaps, and had 


17 Salvage Man. This character, which is that of a wild or savage 
man, was very popular in the mummeries and pageants of the time 
The green men mentioned below were almost always in attendance at 
the popular shows and were originally dressed in green as huntsmen. 
To this day in England the “Green Man” is frequently seen depicted 
on the signboards of inns. The morris-dance was formerly common 
in England, and often formed a part of pageants and processions, 
especially those appropriated to the celebration of the May games. A 
hobby-horse or representation of a dragon, with Robin Hood, Maid 
Marian, and other characters supposed to have been the companions 
of the famous outlaw, executed the dance in garments adorned with 
bells. 



THE MAY-POLE OF MERRY MOUNT 


53 


little bells appended to their garments, tinkling 
with a silver} 7 sound, responsive to the inaudible 
music of their gleesome spirits. Some youths and 
maidens were of soberer garb, yet well maintained 
their places in the irregular throng, by the expres¬ 
sion of wild revelry upon their features. Such were 
the colonists of Merry Mount, as they stood in the 
broad smile of sunset, round their venerated May- 
Pole. 

Had a wanderer, bewildered in the melancholv 
forest, heard their mirth, and stolen a half-af¬ 
frighted glance, he might have fancied them the 
crew of Comus, some already transformed to brutes, 
some midway between man and beast, and the 
others rioting in the how of tipsy jollity that fore¬ 
ran the change. / But a band of Puritans, who 
watched the scene, invisible themselves, compared 
the masques to those devils and ruined souls with 
whom their superstition peopled the black wilder¬ 
ness. 

Within the ring of monsters appeared the two 
airiest forms that had ever trodden on any more 
solid footing than a purple and golden cloud. One 
was a youth in glistening apparel, with a scarf of 
the rainbow pattern crosswise on his breast. His 
right hand held a gilded staff, the ensign of high 
dignity among the revelers, and his left grasped 

13 Comus. In classical mythology. Comus was the presiding genius 
of banquets, festive scenes, revelry, and all joyous pleasures and reck¬ 
less gayety. Milton’s Comus, whom Hawthorne evidently has in mind, 
was a sort of male Circe, and transformed those who came into his 
power, into beasts of one kind or another. 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 




54 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


the slender fingers of a fair maiden, not less gaily 
decorated than himself. Bright roses glowed in 
contrast with the dark and glossy curls of each, 
and were scattered round their feet, or had sprung 
5 up spontaneously there. Behind this lightsome 
couple, so close to the May-Pole that its boughs 
shaded his jovial face, stood the figure of an Eng¬ 
lish priest, canonically dressed, yet decked with 
flowers, in heathen fashion, and wearing a chap- 
10 let of the native vine-leaves. By the riot of his 
rolling eye, and the pagan decorations of his holy 
garb, he seemed the wildest monster there, and the 
very Com us of the crew. 

“Votaries of the May-Pole,” cried the flowery 
15 decked priest, “merrily, all day long, have the 
woods echoed to your mirth. But be this your 
merriest hour, my hearts! Lo, here stand the 
Lord and Lady of the May, whom I, a clerk of Ox¬ 
ford, and high priest of Merry Mount, am presently 
•2o to join in holy matrimony. Up with your nimble 
spirits, ye morrice-dancers, green men, and glee- 
maidens, bears and wolves, and horned gentlemen! 
Come; a chorus now, rich with the old mirth of 
Merry England, and the wilder glee of this fresh 
25forest; and then a dance, to show the youthful 
pair what life is made of, and how airily they should 
go through it! All ye that love the May-Pole, 
lend your voices to the nuptial song of the Lord 
and Lady of the May! ” 

30 This wedlock was more serious than most affairs 
of Merry Mount, where jest and delusion, trick and 
fantasy, kept up a continual carnival. The Lord 


THE MAY-POLE OF MERRY MOUNT 55 

and Lady of the May, though their titles must be 
laid down at sunset, were really and truly to be 
partners for the dance of life, beginning the meas¬ 
ure that same bright eve. The wreath of roses, 
that hung from the lowest green bough of the May- 
Pole, had been twined for them, and would be 
thrown over both their heads, in symbol of their 
flowery union. When the priest had spoken, there¬ 
fore, a riotous uproar burst from the rout of mon¬ 
strous figures. 

“ Begin you the stave, reverend Sir,” cried they 
all; “ and never did the woods ring to such a merry 
peal, as we of the May-Pole shall send up! ” 

Immediately a prelude of pipe, cithern, and viol, 
touched with practised minstrelsy, began to play 
from a neighboring thicket, in such a mirthful 
cadence that the boughs of the May-Pole quivered 
to the sound. But the May Lord, he of the gilded 
staff, chancing to look into his Lady’s eyes, was 
wonder-struck at the almost pensive glance that 
met his own. 

“ Edith, sweet Lady of the May,” whispered he 
reproachfully, “is yon wreath of roses a garland 
to hang above our graves, that you look so sad ? 
0 Edith, this is our golden time! Tarnish it not 
by any pensive shadow of the mind; for it may be 
that nothing of futurity will be brighter than the 
mere remembrance of what is now passing.” 

“That was the very thought that saddened me! 
How came it in your mind too? ” said Edith, in a 
still lower tone than he; for it was high treason to 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 

30 


56 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


be sad at Merry Mount. “ Therefore do I sigh 
amid this festive music. And besides, dear Edgar, 
I struggle as with a dream, and fancy that these 
shapes of our jovial friends are visionary, and their 
5 mirth unreal, and that we are no true Lord and 
Lady of the May. What is the mystery in my 
heart?” 

Just then, as if a spell had loosened them, down 
came a little shower of withering rose-leaves from 
10the Mav-Pole. Alas, for the young lovers! No 
sooner had their hearts glowed with real passion, 
then they were sensible of something vague and un¬ 
substantial in their former pleasures, and felt a 
dreary presentiment of inevitable change. From 
15 the moment that they truly loved, they had sub¬ 
jected themselves to earth’s doom of care and sor¬ 
row, and troubled joy, and had no more a home at 
Merry Mount. That was Edith’s mystery. Now 
leave we the priest to marry them, and the 
20 masquers to sport round the May-Pole, till the 
last sunbeam be withdrawn from its summit, and 
the shadows of the forest mingle gloomily in the 
dance. Meanwhile, we may discover who these gay 
people were. 

25 Two hundred years ago, and more, the Old 
World and its inhabitants became mutually weary 
of each other. Men voyaged by thousands to the 
West; some to barter glass beads, and such like 
jewels, for the furs of the Indian hunter; some to 
30conquer virgin empires; and one stern band to 
pray. But none of these motives had much weight 


THE MAY-POLE OF MERRY MOUNT 


57 


with the colonists of Merry Mount. Their leaders 
were men who had sported so long with life, that, 
when Thought and Wisdom came, even these un¬ 
welcome guests were led astray by the crowd of 
vanities which they should have put to flight. Err- 5 
ing Thought and perverted Wisdom were made to 
put on masques, and play the fool./"The men of 
whom we speak, after losing the heart's fresh 
gaiety, imagined a wild philosophy of pleasure, 
and came hither to act out their latest day-dream. 10 
They gathered followers from all that giddy tribe, 
whose whole life is like the festal days of soberer 
men. In their train were minstrels, not unknown 
in London streets; wandering players, whose thea¬ 
tres had been the halls of noblemen, mummers, 15 
rope-dancers, and mountebanks, who would long 
be missed at wakes, church ales, and fairs; in a 
word, mirth-makers of every sort, such as abound¬ 
ed in that age, but now began to be discounten¬ 
anced by the rapid growth of Puritanism. Light 20 
had their footsteps been on land, and as lightly 
they came across the sea. Many had been mad¬ 
dened by their previous troubles into a gay de¬ 
spair; others were as madly gay in the Hush of 
youth, like the May Lord and his Lady; but what-25 
ever might be the quality of their mirth, old and 
young were gay at Merry Mount.# The young 
deemed themselves happy. The elder spirits, if 
they knew that mirth was but the counterfeit of 
happiness, yet followed the false shadow wilfully, 30 
because at least her garments glittered brightest. 


58 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


Sworn trifiers of a lifetime, they would not venture 
among the sober truths of life, not even to be truly 
blest, 

/"All the hereditary pastimes of Old England were 
5 transplanted hither. The King of Christmas was 
duly crowned, and the Lord of Misrule bore potent 
sway. On the eve of Saint John, they felled whole 
acres of the forest to make bonfires, and danced by 
the blaze all night, crowned with garlands, and 
10 throwing flowers into the flame. At harvest-time, 
though their crop was of the smallest, they made 
an image with the sheaves of Indian corn, and 
wreathed it with autumnal garlands, and bore it 
home triumphantly. But what chiefly character- 
15 ized the colonists of Merry Mount was their venera¬ 
tion for the May-Pole. It has made their true 
history a poet’s tale. Spring decked the hallowed 
emblem with young blossoms and fresh green 
boughs; Summer brought roses of the deepest 
20blush, and the perfected foliage of the forest; 
Autumn enriched it with that red and yellow 
gorgeousness, which converts each wildwood leaf 
into a painted flower; and Winter silvered it with 
sleet, and hung it round with icicles, till it flashed 
25 in the cold sunshine, itself a frozen sunbeam. Thus 
each alternate season did homage to the May- 
Pole, and paid it a tribute of its own richest splen¬ 
dor. Its votaries danced round it, once, at least, 
in every month; sometimes they called it their reli¬ 
gion, or their altar; but always, it was the banr~~ 
staff of Merry Mount. 

t/ 



THE MAY-POLE OF MERRY MOUNT 


59 


Unfortunately, there were men in the New World 
of a sterner faith than these May-Pole worshippers. 
Not far from Merry Mount was a settlement, of 
Puritans, most dismal wretches, who said their 
prayers before daylight, and then wrought in the 5 
forest or the cornfield till evening made it prayer- 
time again. Their weapons were always at hand, 
to shoot down the straggling savage. When they 
met in conclave, it was never to keep up the old 
English mirth, but to hear sermons three hours 10 
long, or to proclaim bounties on the heads of 
wolves and the scalps of Indians. Their festivals 
were fast-days, and their chief pastime the singing 
of psalms. Woe to the youth or maiden who did 
but dream of a dance! The selectman nodded to 15 
the constable; and there sat the light-heeled 
reprobate in the stocks; or if he danced, it was 
round the whipping-post, which might be termed 
the Puritan May-Pole. 

A party of these grim Puritans, toiling through 20 
the difficult woods, each with a horse-load of iron 
armor to burthen his footsteps, would sometimes 
draw near the sunny precincts of Merry Mount. 
There were the silken colonists, sporting round 
their May-Pole; perhaps teaching a bear to dance, 25 
or striving to communicate their mirth to the 
grave Indian; or masquerading in the skins of deer 
and wolves, which they had hunted for that espe¬ 
cial purpose. Often, the whole colony were playing 
at blind-man’s buff, magistrates and all with their 30 
eyes bandaged, except a single scape-goat, whom 


60 


T WICE-TOLD TALES 


the blinded sinners pursued by the tinkling of the 
bells at his garments. Once, it is said, they were 
seen following a flower-decked corpse, with merri¬ 
ment and festive music, to his grave. But did the 
5 dead man laugh? In their quietest times, they 
sang ballads and told tales, for the edification of 
their pious visitors; or perplexed them with jug¬ 
gling tricks; or grinned at them through horse- 
collars; and when sport itself grew wearisome, they 
10 made game of their own stupidity, and began a 
yawning match. At the very least of these enor¬ 
mities, the men of iron shook their heads and 
frowned so darkly, that the revelers looked up, 
imagining that a momentary cloud had overcast 
15 the sunshine, which was to be perpetual there. On 
the other hand, the Puritans affirmed, that, when 
a psalm was pealing from their place of worship, 
the echo which the forest sent them back seemed 
often like the chorus.of a jolly catch, closing with 
20 a roar of laughter. Who but the fiend, and his 
bond-slaves, the crew of Merry Mount, had thus 
disturbed them ? In due time, a feud arose, stern 
and bitter on one side, and as serious on the 
other as anything could be among such light spirits 
25 as had sworn allegiance to the May-Pole. The 
future complexion of New England was involved in 
this important quarrel. Should the grizzly saints 
establish their jurisdiction over the gay sinners, 
then would their spirits darken all the clime, and 
30 make it a land of clouded visages, of hard toil, of 
sermon and psalm for ever. But should the ban- 


THE MAY-POLE OF MERRY MOUNT 


61 


ner-staff of Merry Mount be fortunate, sunshine 
would break upon the hills and flowers would 
beautify the forest, and late posterity do homage 
to the May-Pole. 

% After these authentic passages from history, we 5 
return to the nuptials of the Lord and Lady of the 
May. Alas! we have delayed too long, and must 
darken our tale too suddenly. As we glance again 
at the Ma3-Pole, a solitary sunbeam is fading 
from the summit, and leaves only a faint, golden 10 
tinge, blended with the hues of the rainbow ban¬ 
ner. Even that dim light is now withdrawn, relin¬ 
quishing the whole domain of Merry Mount to the 
evening gloom, which has rushed so instantane¬ 
ously from the black surrounding woods. But 15 
some of these black shadows ha ve rushed forth in 
human shape. 

Yes; with the setting sun, the last day of mirth 
had passed from Merry Mount. The ring of gay 
masquers was disordered and broken; the stag20 
lowered his antlers in dismay; the wolf grew weak¬ 
er than a lamb; the bells of the morrice-dancers 
tinkled with tremulous affright. The Puritans had 
played a characteristic part in the May-Pole mum¬ 
meries. Their darksome figures were intermixed 25 
with the wild shapes of their foes, and made the 
scene a picture of the moment, when waking 
thoughts start up amid the scattered fantasies of 
a dream. The leader of the hostile party stood in 
the centre of the circle, while the rout of monsters 30 
cowered around him, like evil spirits in the pres- 


62 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


ence of a dread magician. No fantastic foolery 
could look him in the face. So stern was the energy 
of his aspect, that the whole man, visage, frame, 
and soul, seemed wrought of iron, gifted with life 
5 and thought, yet all of one substance with his head- 
piece and breast-plate. It was the Puritan of Puri¬ 
tans; it was Endicott himself! 

“Stand off, priest of Baal!” said he, with a grim 
frown, and laying no reverent hand upon the sur- 
lopliee. “I know thee, Blackstone! Thou art the 
man, who couldst not abide the rule even of thine 
own corrupted church, and hast come hither to 
preach iniquity, and to give example of it in thy 
life. But now shall it be seen that the Lord hath 
15 sanctified this wilderness for his peculiar people. 
Woe unto them that would defile it! And first, 
for this flower-decked abomination, the altar of 
thy worship! ” 

And with his keen sword Endicott assaulted the 
20hallowed May-Pole. Nor long did it resist his arm. 
It groaned with a dismal sound; it showered 
leaves and rosebuds upon the remorseless enthu¬ 
siast; and finally, with all its green boughs, and 
ribbons, and flowers, symbolic of departed pleas- 
25 ures, down fell the banner-staff of Merry Mount. 
As it sank, tradition says, the evening sky grew 
darker, and the woods threw forth a more sombre 
shadow. 

Author's Note. Did Governor Endicott speak less positively we 
should suspect a mistake here. The Rev. Mr. Blackstone, though an 
eccentric, is not known to have been an immoral man. We rather 
doubt his identity with the priest of Merry Mount. 




THE MAY-POLE OF ME PRY MOUNT 


63 


“ There,” cried Endicott, looking triumphantly 
on his work,—“there lies the only May-Pole in New 
England! The thought is strong within me, that, 
by its fall, is shadowed forth the fate of light and 
idle mirth-makers, amongst us and our posterity. 6 
Amen! ” saith John Endicott'” 

“ Amen! ” echoed his followers. 

But the votaries of the May-Pole gave one groan 
for their idol. At the sound, the Puritan leader 
glanced at the crew of Comus, each a figure ofio 
broad mirth, yet, at this moment, strangely ex¬ 
pressive of sorrow and dismay. 

“Valiant captain,” quoth Peter Palfrey, the 
Ancient of the band, “ what order shall be taken 
with the prisoners ? ” 15 

“I thought not to repent me of cutting down a 
May-Pole,” replied Endicott, “yet now I could find 
in my heart to plant it again, and give each of 
these bestial pagans one other dance round their 
idol. It would have served rarely for a whipping -20 
post! ” 

“But there are pinetrees enow,” suggested the 
lieutenant. 

“True, good Ancient,” said the leader. “Where¬ 
fore, bind the hea/then crew, and bestow on them a 25 
small matter of stripes apiece, as earnest of our 
future justice. Set some of the rogues in the stocks 
to rest themselves, so soon as Providence shall 
bring us to one of our own well-ordered settle¬ 
ments, where such accommodations may be found. 30 


14 Ancient. An obsolete military title corresponding to “ Ensign.” 



64 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


Further penalties, such as branding and cropping 
of ears, shall be thought of hereafter.” 

“How many stripes for the priest?” inquired 
Ancient Palfrey. 

5 “None as yet,” answered Endicott, bending his 
iron frown upon the culprit. “ It must be for the 
Great and General Court to determine whether 
stripes and long imprisonment, and other grievous 
penalty, may atone for his transgressions. Let 
10him look to himself! For such as violate our civil 
order, it may be permitted us to show mercy. 
But woe to the wretch that troubleth our reli¬ 
gion ! ” 

“And this dancing bear,” resumed the officer. 
15 “ Must he share the stripes of his fellows ? ” 

“Shoot him through the head!” said the 
energetic Puritan. “I suspect witchcraft in the 
beast.” 

“Here be a couple of shining ones,” continued 
20 Peter Palfrey, pointing his weapon at the Lord and 
Lady of the May. “ They seem to be of high sta¬ 
tion among these misdoers. Methinks their dignity 
will not be fitted with less than a double share of 
stripes.” 

25 Endicott rested on his sword, and closely sur¬ 
veyed the dress and aspect of the hapless pair. 
There they stood, pale, downcast, and apprehen¬ 
sive. Yet there was an air of mutual support, and 
of pure affection, seeking aid and giving it, that 
30 showed them to be man and wife, with the sanc¬ 
tion of a priest upon their love. The youth, in the 


THE MAY-POLE OF MERRY MOUNT 65 


peril of the moment, had dropped his gilded staff, 
and thrown his arm about the Lady of the May, 
who leaned against his breast, too lightly to bur¬ 
then him, but with weight enough to express that 
their destinies -were linked together, for good or 5 
evil. They looked first at each other, and then 
into the grim captain’s face. There they stood, in 
the first hour of wedlock, while the idle pleasures, 
of which their companions were the emblems, had 
given place to the sternest cares of life, personified 10 
by the dark Puritans. But never had their youth¬ 
ful beauty seemed so pure and high, as when its 
glow was chastened by adversity. 

“ Youth,” said Endicott, “ye stand in an evil 
case, thou and thy maiden wife. Make ready pres-15 
entlv; for I am minded that ve shall both have a 
token to remember your wedding-day! ” 

“Stern man,” cried the May Lord, “how can I 
move thee? Were the means at hand, I would re¬ 
sist to the death. Being powerless, I entreat!20 
Do with me as thou wilt, but let Edith go un¬ 
touched ! ” 

“Not so,” replied the immitigable zealot. “We 
are not wont to show an idle courtesy to that sex, 
which requireth the stricter discipline. What say- 25 
eth thou, maid? Shall thv silken bridegroom 
suffer thy share of the penalty, besides his own? ” 

“Be it death,” said Edith, “and lay it all on 
me! ” 

Truly, as Endicott had said, the poor lovers stood 30 
in a woful case. Their foes were triumphant, their 


66 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


friends captive and abased, their home desolate, 
the benighted wilderness around them, and a rig¬ 
orous destiny, in the shape of the Puritan leader, 
their only guide. Yet the deepening twilight could 
5 not altogether conceal that the iron man was soft¬ 
ened ; he smiled at the fair spectacle of early love; 
he almost sighed for the inevitable blight of early 
hopes. 

“The troubles of life have come hastily on this 
10young couple,” observed Endicott. “We will see 
how they comport themselves under their present 
trials, ere we burthen them with greater. If, among 
the spoil, there be any garments of a more decent 
fashion, let them be put upon this May Lord and 
15 his Lady, instead of their glistening vanities. 
Look to it, some of you.” 

“And shall not the youth’s hair be cut? ” asked 
Peter Palfrey, looking with abhorrence at the love¬ 
lock and long glossy curls of the young man. 

20 “Crop it forthwith, and that in the true pump¬ 
kin-shell fashion,” answered the captain. “Then 
bring them along with us, but more gently than 
their fellows. There be qualities in the youth, which 
may make him valiant to fight, and sober to toil, 
25 and pious to pray; and in the maiden, that may 
fit her to become a mother in our Israel, bringing- 
up babes in better nurture than her oavu hath been. 
Nor think ye, young ones, that they are the happi¬ 
est, even in our lifetime of a moment, Avho misspend 
it in dancing round a May-Pole! ” 


THE MAY-POLE OF MERBY MOUNT 67 


And Endicott, the severest Puritan of all who 
laid the rock-foundation of New England, lifted the 
wreath of roses from the ruin of the May-Pole, and 
threw it, with his own gauntleted hand, over the 
heads of the Lord and Lady of the May. It was a 6 
deed of prophecy. As the moral gloom of the 
world overpowers all systematic gaiety, even so 
was their home of wild mirth made desolate amid 
the sad forest. They returned to it no more. But, 
as their flowery garland was wreathed of theio 
brightest roses that had grown there, so, in the tie 
that united them, were intertwined all the purest 
and best of their early joys. They went heaven¬ 
ward, supporting each other along the difficult 
path which it was their lot to tread, and never 15 
wasted one regretful thought on the vanities of 
Merry Mount. 


LEGENDS OF THE PROVINCE HOUSE 


HOWE’S MASQUERADE 

One afternoon last summer, while walking along 
Washington Street, my eye was attracted by a 
sign-board protruding over a narrow archway 
nearly opposite the Old South Church. The sign 
5 represented the front of a stately edifice which was 
designated as the “Old Province House, kept by 
Thomas Waite.” I was glad to be thus reminded 
of a purpose, long entertained, of visiting and 
rambling over the mansion of the old royal gov¬ 
ernors of Massachusetts, and, entering the arched 
passage which penetrated through the middle of a 
brick row of shops, a few steps transported me 
from the busy heart of modern Boston into a 
small and secluded courtyard. One side of this 
15 space was occupied by the square front of the 
Province House, three stories high and surmount¬ 
ed by a cupola, on the top of which a gilded Indian 
was discernible, with his bow bent and his arrow 
on the string, as if aiming at the weathercock on 
20 the spire of the Old South. The figure has kept this 
attitude for seventy years or more, ever since good 
Deacon Drowne, a cunning carver of wood, first 
stationed him on his long sentinel’s watch over 
the city. 68 



HOWE’S MASQUERADE 


69 


The Province House is constructed of brick, 
which seems recently to have been overlaid with a 
coat of light-colored paint. A flight of red free¬ 
stone steps fenced in by a balustrade of curiously 
wrought iron ascends from the court-yard to the 
spacious porch, over which is a balcony with an 
iron balustrade of similar pattern and workman¬ 
ship to that beneath. These letters and figures 
—“16 P. S. 79”—are wrought into the ironwork 
of the balcony, and probably express the date of 
the edifice, with the initials of its founder’s name. 

A wide door with double leaves admitted me into 
the hall or entry, on the right of which is the en¬ 
trance to the bar-room. It was in this apart¬ 
ment, I presume, that the ancient governors held 
their levees with vice-regal pomp, surrounded by 
the military men, the counsellors, the judges, and 
other officers of the Crown, while all the loyalty of 
the Province thronged to do them honor. But 
the room in its present condition cannot boast 
even of faded magnificence. The panelled wainscot 
is covered with dingy paint and acquires a duskier 
hue from the deep shadow into which the Province 
House is thrown by the brick block that shuts it 
in from Washington Street. A ray of sunshine 
never visits this apartment any more than the 
glare of the festal torches which have been extin¬ 
guished from the era of the Revolution. The most 
venerable and ornamental object is a chimney- 
piece set round with Dutch tiles of blue-figured 
china, representing scenes from Scripture, and, for 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 

30 


70 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


aught I know, the lady of Pownall or Bernard may 
have sat beside this fireplace and told her children 
the story of each blue tile. A bar in modern style, 
well replenished with decanters, bottles, cigar-boxes 
sand network bags of lemons, and provided with a 
beer-pump and a soda-fount, extends along one 
side of the room. 

At my entrance an elderly person was smacking 
his lips with a zest which satisfied me that the 
10 cellars of the Province House still hold good liquor, 
though doubtless of other vintages than were 
quaffed by the old governors. After sipping a 
glass of port-sangaree prepared by the skilful 
hands of Mr. Thomas Waite, I besought that 
15 worthy successor and representative of so many 
historic personages to conduct me over their time- 
honored mansion. He readily complied, but, to 
confess the truth, I was forced to draw strenuously 
upon my imagination in order to find a ught that 
20 was interesting in a house which, without its 
historic associations, would have seemed merely 
such a tavern as is usuallv favored bv the custom 
of decent city borders and old-fashioned country 
gentlemen. The chambers, which were probably 
25 spacious in former times, are now cut up by par¬ 
titions and subdivided into little nooks, each af¬ 
fording scanty room for the narrow bed and chair 
and dressing-table of a single lodger. The great 
staircase, however, may be termed, without much 
30 hyperbole, a feature of grandeur and magnificence. 
It winds through the midst of the house by flights 







HOWE’S MASQUERADE 


71 


of broad steps, each flight terminating in a square 
landing-place, whence the ascent is continued 
toward the cupalo. A carved balustrade, freshly 
painted in the lower stories, but growing dingier 
as we ascend, borders the staircase with its quaintly 5 
twisted and intertwined pillars, from top to bot¬ 
tom. Up these stairs the military boots, or per¬ 
chance the gouty shoes, of many a governor have 
trodden as the wearers mounted to the cupola 
which afforded them so wide a view over their met -10 
ropolis and the surrounding country. The cupola 
is an octagon with several windows, and a door 
opening upon the roof. From this station, as I 
pleased myself with imagining, Gage may have be¬ 
held his disastrous victory on Bunker Hill (unless 15 
one of the trimountains intervened), and Howe 
have marked the approaches of Washington’s be¬ 
sieging army, although the buildings since erected 
in the vicinity have shut out almost every object 
save the steeple of the Old South, which seems al- 20 
most within arm’s length. Descending from the 
cupola, I paused in the garret to observe the pon¬ 
derous white-oak framework, so much more mas¬ 
sive than the frames of modern houses, and thereby 
resembling an antique skeleton. The brick walls, 25 
the materials of which were imported from Holland, 
and the timbers of the mansion, are still as sound 
as ever, but, the floors and other interior parts 
being greatly decayed, it is contemplated to gut 
the whole and build a new house within the ancient 30 
frame and brickwork. Among other inconveniences 


72 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


of the present edifice, mine host mentioned that 
any jar or motion was apt to shakedown the dust 
of ages out of the ceiling of one chamber upon the 
floor of that beneath it. 

5 We stepped forth from the great front window 
into the balcony where in old times it was doubt¬ 
less the custom of the king’s representative to show 
himself to a lojml populace, requiting their huzzas 
and tossed-up hats with stately bendings of his 
10 dignified person. In those days the front of the 
Province House looked upon the street, and the 
whole site now occupied by the brick range of stores, 
as well as the present court-yard, was laid out in 
grass-plats overshadowed by trees and bordered 
15 by a wrought-iron fence. Now the old aristocratic 
edifice hides its time-worn visage behind an upstart 
modern building; at one of the back windows I ob¬ 
served some pretty tailoresses sewing and chatting 
and laughing, with now and then a careless glance 
20 toward the balcony. Descending thence, we again 
entered the bar-room, where the elderly gentleman 
above mentioned—the smack of whose lips had 
spoken so favorably for Mr. Waite’s good liquor— 
was still lounging in his chair. He seemed to be, if 
25 not a lodger, at least a familiar visitor of the 
house who might be supposed to have his regular 
score at the bar, his summer seat at the open win¬ 
dow and his prescriptive corner at the winter’s fire¬ 
side. Being of a sociable aspect, I ventured to ad- 
30 dress him with a remark calculated to draw forth 
his historical reminiscences, if any such were in his 


HOWE’S MASQUERADE 


73 


mind, and it gratified me to discover that, betAveen 

memory and tradition, the old gentleman was 

really possessed of some very pleasant gossip 

about the Province House. The portion of his 

talk which chieflv interested me was the outline of 

*/ 

the following legend. He professed to have received 
it at one or two removes from an eve-witness, 
but this derivation, together with the lapse of 
time, must have afforded opportunities for many 
variations of the narrative; so that, despairing 
of literal and absolute truth, I have not scrupled 
to make such further changes as seemed conducive 
to the reader’s profit and delight. 

7^ At one of the entertainments given at the Prov¬ 
ince House during the latter part of the siege of 
Boston there passed a scene which has never yet 
been satisfactorily explained. The officers of the 
British army and the loyal gentry of the province, 
most of whom were collected within the beleaguered 
town, had been invited to a masqued ball, for it 
was the policy for Sir William Howe to hide the 
distress and danger of the period and the desperate 
aspect of the siege under an ostentation of festivity. 
The spectacle of this evening, if the oldest members 
of the provincial court circle might be believed, was 
the most gay and gorgeous affair that had occured 
in the annals of the government. The brilliantly- 
lighted apartments were thronged with figures that 
seemed to have stepped from the dark canvas of 
historic portraits or to have flitted forth from the 
magic pages of romance, or at least to have flown 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 

30 



74 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


hither from one of the London theatres without a 
change of garments. Steeled knights of the Con¬ 
quest, bearded statesmen of Queen Elizabeth and 
high ruffled ladies of her court were mingled with 
5 characters of comedy, such as a parti-colored Mer¬ 
ry Andrew jingling his cap and bells, a Falstaff al¬ 
most as provocative of laughter as his prototype, 
and a Don Quixote with a bean-pole for a lance 
and a pot-lid for a shield. 

10 But the broadest merriment was excited by a 
group of figures ridiculously dressed in old regi¬ 
mentals which seemed to have been purchased at a 
military rag-fair or pilfered from some receptacle 
of the cast-off clothes of both the French and Brit- 
15 ish armies. Portions of their attire had probably 
been worn at the siege of Louisburg, and the coats 
of most recent cut might have been rent and tat¬ 
tered by sword, ball or bayonet as long ago as 
Wolfe’s victory. One of these worthies—a tall, lank 
20 figure brandishing a rusty sword of immense longi¬ 
tude—purported to be no less a personage than 
General George Washington, and the other princi¬ 
pal officers of the American army, such as Gates, 
Lee, Putnam, Schuyler, Ward and Heath, were 
25 represented by similar scarecrows. An interview 
in the mock-heroic style between the rebel warriors 
and the British commander-in-chief was received 
with immense applause, which came loudest of all 
from the loyalists of the colony, 
so There was one of the guests, however, who stood 
apart, eyeing these antics sternly and scornfully at 


HOWE’S MASQUERADE 


75 


once with a frown and a bitter smile. It was an 
old man formerly of high station and great repute 
in the province, and who had been a very famous 
soldier in his day. Some surprise had been ex¬ 
pressed that a person of Colonel Joliffe’s known 5 
Whig* principles, though now too old to take an 
active part in the contest, should have remained 
in Boston during the siege, and especially that 
he should consent to show himself in the mansion 
of Sir William Howe. But thither he had comeio 
with a fair granddaughter under his arm, and 
there, amid all the mirth and buffoonery, stood 
this stern old figure, the best sustained character 
in the masquerade, because so well representing the 
antique spirit of his native land. The other guests l 
affirmed that Colonel Joliffe’s black puritanical 
scowl threw a shadow round about him, although, 
in spite of his sombre influence, their gayety con¬ 
tinued to blaze higher, like—an ominous compari¬ 
son—the flickering brilliancy of a lamp which has 25 
but a little while to burn. 

Eleven strokes full half an hour ago had pealed 
from the clock of the Old South, when a rumor was 
circulated among the company that some new 
spectacle or pageant was about to be exhibited 2 
which should put a fitting close to the splendid fes¬ 
tivities of the night. 

“ What new jest has Your Excellency in hand?” 
asked the Reverend Mather Byles, whose Presby¬ 
terian scruples had not kept him from the enter- 30 
tainment. “ Trust me, sir, I have already laughed 



76 


TWICE TOLD TALES 


more than beseems my cloth at your Homeric con¬ 
fabulation with yonder ragamuffin general of the 
rebels. One other such fit of merriment, and I must 
throw off my clerical wig and band.” 

5 “Not so good, Dr. Byles,” answered Sir William 
Howe; “if mirth were a crime, you had never 
gained your doctorate in divinity. As to this new 
foolery, I know no more about it than yourself— 
perhaps not so much. Honestly, now, doctor, 
10 have you not stirred up the sober brains of some 
of your countrymen to enact a scene in our mas¬ 
querade? ” 

“Perhaps,” slyly remarked the granddaughter 
of Colonel Joliffe, whose high spirits had been 
15 stung by many taunts against New England— 
“perhaps we are to have a masque of allegorial 
figures—Victory with trophies from Lexington and 
Bunker Hill, Plenty with her overflowing horn to 
typify the present abundance in this good town, 
20 and Glory with a wreath for His Excellency’s 
brow.” 

Sir William Howe smiled at words which he 
would have answered with one of his darkest 
frowns had they been uttered by lips that wore a 
25 beard. He was spared the necessity of a retort by 
a singular interruption. A sound of music was 
heard without the house, as if proceedingfrom a full 
band of military instruments stationed in the 
street, playing, not such a festal strain as was 
30suited to the occasion, but a slow funeral-march. 
The drums appeared to be muffled, and the trum- 


HOWE’S MASQUERADE 


77 


pets poured forth a wailing breath which at once 
hushed the merriment of the auditors, filling all 
wonder and some with apprehension. The idea 
occurred to many that either the funeral procession 
of some great personage had halted in front of the 5 
Province House, or that a corpse in a velvet-cov¬ 
ered and gorgeously-decorated coffin was about to 
be borne from the portal. After listening a moment, 
Sir William Howe called in a stern voice to the 
leader of the musicians, who had hitherto enliven-10 
ed the entertainment with gay and lightsome mel¬ 
odies. The man was drum-major to one of the 
British regiments. 

“Dighton,” demanded the general, “ What means 
this foolery? Bid your band silence that dead 15 
march, or, by my word, they shall have sufficient 
cause for their lugubrious strains. Silence it, 
sirrah! ” 

“Please, Your Honor,” answered the drum- 
major, whose rubicund visage had lost all its color, 20 
“the fault is none of mine. I and my band are all 
here together, and I question whether there be a 
man of us that could play that march without 
book. I never heard it but once before, and that 
was at the funeral of his late Majesty, King 25 
George II.” 

“Well, well! ” said Sir William Howe, recovering 
his composure; “it is the prelude of some mas¬ 
querading antic. Let it pass.” 

A figure now presented itself, but ainoug the 3 o 
many fantastic masks that were dispersed through 


78 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


the apartments none could tell precisely from 
whence it came. It was a man in an old-fashioned 
dress of black serge and having the aspect of a 
steward or principal domestic in the household of 
5 a nobleman or great English landholder. This 
figure advanced to the outer door of the mansion, 
and, throwing both its leaves wide open, with¬ 
drew a little to one side and looked back toward 
the grand staircase, as if expecting some person 
10to descend. At the same time, the music in the 
street sounded a loud and doleful summons. The 
eyes of Sir William Howe and his guests being di¬ 
rected to the staircase, there appeared on the up¬ 
permost landing-place, that was discernible from 
15 the bottom, several personages descending toward 
the door. The foremost was a man of stern vis¬ 
age, wearing a steeple-crowned hat and a skull-cap 
beneath it, a dark cloak and huge wrinkled boots 
that came halfway up his legs. Under his arm was 
20 a rolled-up banner which seemed to be the banner 
of England, but strangely rent and torn; he had a 
sword in his right hand and grasped a Bible in his 
left. The next figure was of milder aspect, yet full 
of dignity, wearing a broad ruff over which de- 
25scended a beard, a gown of wrought velvet and a 
doublet and hose of black satin; he carried a roll of 
manuscript in his hand. Close behind these two 
came a young man of very striking countenance 
and demeanor with deep thought and eontempla- 
30 tion on his brow, and perhaps a flash of enthusiasm 
in his eye; his garb, like that of his predecessors, 


HOWE'S MASQUERADE 


79 


was of an antique fashion, and there was a stain of 
blood upon his ruff. In the same group with these 
were three or four others, all men of dignity and 
evident command, and bearing themselves like per¬ 
sonages who were accustomed to the gaze of the 5 
multitude. It was the idea of the beholders that 
these figures went to join the mysterious funeral 
that had halted in front of the Province House, yet 
that supposition seemed to be contradicted by the 
air of triumph with which they waved their hands 10 
as they crossed the threshold and vanished through 
the portal. 

“In the devil’s name, what is this?” muttered 
Sir William Howe to a gentleman beside him. “A 
procession of the regicide judges of King Charles the 15 
martyr? ” 

“These,” said Colonel Joliffe, breaking silence al¬ 
most for the first time that evening—“ these, if I 
interpret them aright, are the Puritan governors, 
the rulers of the old original democracy of Massa-20 
chusetts—Endicott with the banner from which he 
had torn the symbol of subjection, and Winthrop 
and Sir Henry Vane and Dudley, Haynes, Belling¬ 
ham and Leverett.” 

“ Why had that young man a stain of blood upon 25 
his ruff?” asked Miss Joliffe. 

“Because in after-years,” answered her grand¬ 
father, “he laid down the wisest head in England 
upon the block for the principles of liberty.” 

“ Will not Your Excellency order out the guard?” 30 
whispered Lord Percy, who, with other British of- 


80 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


fleers, who had now assembled round the general. 
“ There may be a plot under this mummery.” 

“Tush! we have nothing to fear,” carelessly re¬ 
plied Sir William Howe. “There can be no worse 
r treason in the matter than a jest, and that some¬ 
what of the dullest. Even were it a sharp and bit¬ 
ter one, our best policy would be to laugh it off. 
See! here come more of these gentry.” 

Another group of characters had now partly de- 
lOscended the staircase. The first was a venerable 
and white-bearded patriarch who cautiously felt 
his way downward with a staff. Treading hastily 
behind him, and stretching forth his gauntleted 
hand as if to grasp the old man’s shoulder, came a 
is tall soldier-like figure equipped with a plumed cap 
of steel, a bright breast-plate and a long sword, 
which rattled against the stairs. Next was seen a 
stout man dressed in rich and courtly attire, but 
not of courtly demeanor; his gait had the swinging 
20 motion of a seaman’s walk, and, chancing to stum¬ 
ble on the staircase, he suddenly grew wrathful and 
was heard to mutter an oath. He was followed by 
a noble-looking personage in a curled wig such as 
are represented in the portraits of Queen Anne’s 
25 time and earlier, and the breast of his coat was 
decorated with an embroidered star. While ad van- 
cing to the door he bowed to the right hand and 
to the left in a very gracious and insinuating style, 
but as he crossed the threshold, unlike the earlv 
so Puritan governors, he seemed to wring his hands 
with sorrow. 


HOWE'S MASQUERADE 


81 


“Prithee, play the part of a chorus, good Dr. 
Byles,” said Sir William Howe. “ What worthies 
are these? ” 

“If it please Your Excellency, they lived some¬ 
what before my day,” answered the doctor; “but 5 
doubtless our friend the colonel has been hand and 
glove with them.” 

“Their living faces I never looked upon,” said 
Colonel Joliffe, gravely; “although I have spoken 
face to face with many rulers of this land, and shall 10 
greet yet another with an old man’s blessing ere I 
die. But we talk of these figures. I take the ven¬ 
erable patriarch to be Bradstreet, the last of the 
Puritans, who was governor at ninety or there¬ 
abouts. The next is Sir Edmund Andros, a tyrant, 15 
as any New England school-boy will tell you, and 
therefore the people cast him down from his high 
seat into a dungeon. Then comes Sir William 
Phipps, shepherd, cooper, sea-captain and gover¬ 
nor. May many of his countrymen rise as high 20 
from as low an origin! Lastly, you saw the gra¬ 
cious Earl of Bellamont, who ruled us under King 
William.” 

“ But what is the meaning of it all? ” asked Lord 

Percy. 25 

“Now, were I a rebel,’’said Miss Joliffe, half aloud, 

“I might fancy that the ghosts of these ancient 
governors had been summoned to form the 
funeral procession of royal authority in New Eng¬ 
land.” 

Several other figures were now seen at the turn 


30 


82 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


of the staircase. The one in advance had a thought¬ 
ful, anxious and somewhat crafty expression of 
face, and in spite of his loftiness of manner, which 
was evidently the result both of an ambitious spirit 
5 and of long continuance in high stations, he seemed 
not incapable of cringing to a greater than him¬ 
self. A few steps behind him came an officer in a 
scarlet and embroidered uniform cut in a fashion 
old enough to have been worn by the Duke of Marl- 
10 borough. His nose had a rubicund tinge, which, 
together with the twinkle of his eye, might have 
marked him as a lover of the wine-cup and good- 
fellowship; notwithstanding which tokens, he ap¬ 
peared ill at ease, and often glanced around him as 
15 if apprehensive of some secret mischief. Next came 
a portly gentleman wearing a coat of shaggy cloth 
lined with silken velvet; he had sense, shrewdness 
and humor in his face and a folio under his arm, 
but his aspect was that of a man vexed and tor- 
20 mented beyond all patience and harassed almost 
to death. He went hastily down and was followed 
by a dignified person dressed in a purple velvet suit 
with very rich embroidery; his demeanor would 
have possessed much stateliness, only that a griev- 
25 ous fit of the gout compelled him to hobble from 
stair to stair with contortions of face and body. 
When Dr. Byles beheld this figure on the staircase, 
he shivered as with an ague, but continued to watch 
him steadfastly until the gouty gentleman had 
30 reached the threshold, made a gesture of anguish 
and despair and vanished into the outer gloom. 


HOWE'S MASQUERADE 


83 


whither the funeral music summoned him. 

“Governor Belcher—my old patron—in his very 
shape and dress! ” gasped Dr. Byles. “ This is an 
awful mockery.” 

“A tedious foolery, rather,” said Sir William 
Howe, with an air of indifference. “But who were 
the three that preceded him.” 

“ Governor Dudley, a cunning politician ; yet his 
craft once brought him to a prison,” replied Colonel 
Joliffe. ‘ ‘ Governor Shute, formerlv a colonel under 
Marlborough, and whom the people frightened 
out of the province, and learned Governor Burnet, 
whom the legislature tormented into a mortal 
fever.” 

“Methinks they were miserable men—these royal 
governors of Massachusetts,” observed Miss Joliffe. 
“ Heavens! how dim the light grows! ” 

It was certainly a fact that the large lamp which 
illuminated the staircase now burned dim and 
duskily; so that several figures which passed hastily 
down the stairs and went forth from the porch ap¬ 
peared rather like shadows than persons of fleshly 
substance. 

Sir William Howe and his guests stood at the 
doors of the contiguous apartments watching the 
progress of this singular pageant with various 
emotions of anger, contempt or half-acknowledged 
fear, but still with an anxious curiosity. The 
shapes which now seemed hastening to join the 
mysterious procession were recognized rather by 
striking peculiarities of dress or broad character- 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 

30 


84 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


istics of manner than by any perceptible resem¬ 
blance of features to their prototypes. Their faces, 
indeed, were invariably kept in deep shadow, but 
Dr. Byles and other gentlemen who had long been 
5 familiar with the successive rulers of the province 
were heard to whisper the names of Shirley, Pow- 
nall, of Sir Francis Bernard and of the well-remem¬ 
bered Hutchinson, thereby confessing that the ac¬ 
tors, whoever they might be, in this spectral march 
10 of governors had succeeded in putting on some 
distant portraiture of the real personages. As they 
vanished from the door, still did these shadows 
toss their arms into the gloom of night with a 
dread expression of woe. Following the mimic 
15 representative of Hutchinson came a military 
figure holding before his face the cocked hat which 
he had taken from his powdered head, but his epau¬ 
lettes and other insignia of rank were those of a 
general officer, and somethinginhis mein reminded 
20 the beholders of one who had recently been master 
of the Province House and chief of all the land. 

“The shape of Gage, as true as in a looking- 
glass! ” exclaimed Lord Percy, turning pale. 

“No surely,” cried Miss Joliffe, laughing hysteri- 
25cally, “it could not be Gage, or Sir William would 
have greeted his old comrade in arms. Perhaps he 
will not suffer the next to pass unchallenged.” 

“Of that be assured, young lady,” answered Sir 
William Howe, fixing his eyes with a very marked 
30 expression upon the immovable visage of her 
grandfather. “ I have long enough delayed to pay 


HOWE’S MASQUERADE 


85 


the ceremonies of a host to these departing guests; 
the next that takes his leave shall receive due 
courtesy.” 

A wild and dreary burst of music came through 
the open door. It seemed as if the procession, 
which had been gradually filling up its ranks, were 
now about to move, and that this loud appeal of 
the wailing trumpets and roll of the muffled drums 
were a call to some loiterer to make haste. Manv 

KJ 

eyes, by an irresistible impulse, were turned upon 
Sir William Howe, as if it were he whom the dreary 
music summoned to the funeral of departed power. 

“ See! here comes the last,” whispered Miss Joliffe 
pointing her tremulous finger to the staircase. 

A figure had come into view as if descending the 
stairs, although so dusky was the region whence it 
emerged some of the spectators fancied they had 
seen this human shape suddenly moulding itself 
amid the gloom. Downward the figure came with 
a stately and martial tread, and reaching the low¬ 
est stair, was observed to be a tall man booted 
and wrapped in a military cloak, which was drawn 
up around the face so as to meet the flapped brim 
of a laced hat; the features, therefere, were com¬ 
pletely hidden. But the British officers deemed 
that they had seen that military cloak before, and 
even recognized the frayed embroidery ou the col¬ 
lar, as well as the gilded scabbard of a sword which 
protruded from the folds of the cloak and glittered 
in a vivid gleam of light. Apart from these trifling 
particulars there were characteristics of gait and 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 

30 


86 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


bearing which compelled the wondering guests to 
glance from the shrouded figure to Sir William Howe 
as if to satisfy themselves that their host had not 
suddenly vanished from the midst of them. With 
5 a dark flush of wrath upon his brow, they saw the 
general draw his sword and advance to meet the 
figure in the cloak before the latter had stepped 
one pace upon the floor. 

“ Villain, unmuffle yourself! ” cried he, “ You pass 
i^no farther.” 

The figure, without blenching a hair’s-breadth 
from the sword which was lowered at his breast, 
made a solemn pause and lowered the cape of the 
cloak from about his face, yet not sufficiently for 
15 the spectators to catch a glimpse of it. But Sir 
William Howe had evidently seen enough. The 
sternness of his countenance gave place to a look 
of wild amazement, if not horror, while he recoiled 
several steps from the figure and let fall his sword 
20 upon the floor. The martial shape again drew 
the cloak about his features and passed on, but, 
reaching the threshold with his back toward the 
spectators, he Avas seen to stamp his foot and 
shake his clenched hands in the air. It Avas after- 
25 wards affirmed that Sir William HoAA r e had repeated 
that self-same gesture of rage and sorrow Avhen for 
the last time, and as the last royal governor, he 
passed through the portal of the Province 
House. 

30 “Hark! The procession moves,” said Miss 
Joliffe. 


HOWE’S MASQUERADE 


87 


The music was dying away along the street, and 
its dismal strains were mingled with the knell of 
midnight from the steeple of the Old South and 
with the roar of artillery which announced that the 
beleaguered army of Washington had intrenched 
itself upon a nearer height than before. As the 
deep boom of the cannon smote upon his ear Col¬ 
onel Joliffe raised himself to the full height of 
his aged form and smiled sternly on the British 
general. 

“Would Your Excellency inquire further into the 
mystery of this pageant? ” said he. 

“Take care of your gray head!” cried Sir 
William Howe, fiercely, though with a quivering- 
lip. “It has stood too long on a traitor’s shoul¬ 
ders.” 

“You must make haste to chop it off, then,” 
calmly replied the colonel, “for a few hours longer, 
and not all the power of Sir William Howe, nor of 
his master, shall cause one of these gray hairs to 
fall. The empire of Britain in this ancient province 
is at its last gasp to-night; almost while I speak 
it is a dead corpse, and methinks the shadows 
of the old governors are fit mourners at its 
funeral.” 

With these words Colonel Joliffe threw on his 
cloak, and, drawing his grand-daughter’s arm 
Avithin his own, retired from the last festival that a 
British ruler ever held in the old province of Mas¬ 
sachusetts Bay. It Avas supposed that the colonel 
and the young lady possessed some secret intelli- 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 

30 


88 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


gence in regard to the mysterious pageant of that 
night. However this might be, such knowledge 
has never become general. The actors in the scene 
have vanished into deeper obscurity than even 
5 that wild Indian band who scattered the cargoes of 
the tea-ships on the waves and gained a place in 
history, yet left no names. But superstition, 
among other legends of this mansion, repeats the 
wondrous tale that on the anniversary night of 
ID Britain’s discomfiture the ghosts of the ancient 
governors of Massachusetts still glide through the 
portal of the Province House. And last of all 
comes a figure shrouded in a military cloak, toss¬ 
ing his clenched hands into the air and stamping 
15 his iron-shod boots upon the broad freestone steps 
with a semblance of feverish despair, but without 
the sound of a foot-tramp. 

When the truth-telling accents of the elderly gen¬ 
tleman were hushed, I drew a long breath and look- 
20 ed round the room, striving with the best energy 
of my imagination to throw a tinge of romance 
and historic grandeur over the realities of the 
scene. But my nostrils snuffed up a scent of cigar- 
smoke, clouds of which the narrator had emitted 
25 by way of visible emblem, I suppose, of the nebu¬ 
lous obscurity of his tale. Moreover, my gorgeous 
fantasies were woefully disturbed by the rattling of 
the spoon in a tumbler of whiskey-punch which Mr. 
Thomas Waite was mingling for a customer. Nor 
30 did it add to the picturesque appearance of the 
panelled walls that the slate of the Brookline stage 


HOWE'S MASQUERADE 


89 


was suspended against them, instead of the armo¬ 
rial escutcheon of some far-descended governor. A 
stage-driver sat at one of the windows reading a 
penny paper of the day—the Boston Times — and pre¬ 
senting a figure which could nowise be brought into 
any picture of “Times in Boston” seventy or a 
hundred years ago. On the window-seat lay a 
bundle neatly done up in brown paper, the direc¬ 
tion of which I had the idle curiosity to read: 
Miss Susan Huggins, at the Province House. 
A pretty chamber-maid, no doubt. In truth, it is 
desperately hard work when we attempt to throw 
the spell of hoar antiquity over localities with 
which the living world and the day that is passing 
over ns have aught to do. Yet, as I glanced at the 
stately staircase down which the procession of the 
old governors had descended, and as I emerged 
through the venerable portal whence their figures 
had preceded me, it gladdened me to be conscious 
of a thrill of awe. Then, diving through the nar 
row archway, a few strides transported me into 
the densest throng of Washington Street. 


5 

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15 

20 


EDWARD RANDOLPH’S PORTRAIT 


The old legendary guest of the Province House 
abode in my remembrance from midsummer till 
January. One idle evening last winter, confident 
that he would be found in the snuggest corner of 
the bar-room, I resolved to pay him another visit, 

5 hoping to deserve well of my country by snatching 
from oblivion some else unheard-of fact of history. 
The night was chill and raw, and rendered boister¬ 
ous by almost a gale of wind which whistled along 
Washington Street, causing the gaslights to flare 
10 and flicker within the lamps. 

As I hurried onward my fancy was busy with a 
comparison between the present aspect of the street 
and that which it probably wore when the British 
governors inhabited the mansion whither I was 
15 now going. Brick edifices in those times were few 
till a succession of destructive fires had swept, and 
swept again, the wooden dwellings and warehouses 
from the most populous quarters of the town. 
The buildings stood insulated and independent, 
20 not, as now, merging their separate existences 
into connected ranges with a front of tiresome 
identity, but each possessing features of its own, 
as if the owner’s individual taste had shaped it, 
and the whole presenting a picturesque irregularity 



EDWARD RANDOLPH’S PORTRAIT 


91 


the absence of which is hardly compensated by any 
beauties of our modern architecture. Such a scene, 
dimly vanishing from the eye by the ray of here 
and there a tallow candle glimmering through the 
small panes of scattered windows, would form a 
sombre contrast to the street as I beheld it with 
the gaslights blazing from corner to corner, flaming 
within the shops and throwing a noon-day bright¬ 
ness through the huge plates of glass. But the 
black, lowering sky, as I turned my eyes upward, 
wore, doubtless the same visage as when it frowned 
upon the ante-Revolutionary New Englanders. 
The wintry blast had the same shriek that was 
familiar to their ears. The Old South Church, too, 
still pointed its antique spire into the darkness 
and was lost between earth and heaven, and, as I 
passed, its clock, which had warned so many gen¬ 
erations how transitory was their lifetime, spoke 
heavily and slow the same unregarded moral to 
myself. “Only seven o’clock!” thought I. “My 
old friend’s legends will scarcely kill the hours 
’twixt this and bedtime.” 

Passing through the narrow arch, I crossed the 
courtyard, the confined precincts of which were 
made visible by a lantern over the portal of the 
Province House. On entering the bar-room, I 
found, as I expected, the old tradition-monger 
seated by a special good fire of anthracite, compel¬ 
ling clouds of smoke from a corpulent cigar. He 
recognized me with evident pleasure, for my rare 
qualities as a patient listener invariably made me 


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20 

25 

30 


92 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


a favorite with the elderly gentlemen and ladies of 
narrative propensities. Drawing a chair to the 
fire, I desired mine host to favor us with a glass 
apiece of whiskey-punch, which was speedily pre¬ 
spared, steaming hot, with a slice of lemon at the 
bottom, a dark red stratum of port wine upon the 
surface and a sprinkling of nutmeg strewn over 
all. As we touched our glasses together, my legend¬ 
ary friend made himself known to me as Mr. Bela Tif- 
lofany, and I rejoiced at the oddity of the name, be¬ 
cause it gave his image and character a sort of in¬ 
dividuality in my conception. The old gentleman’s 
draught acted as a solvent upon his memory, so 
that it overflowed with tales, traditions, anecdotes 
15 of famous dead people and traits of ancient man¬ 
ners, some of which w T ere childish as a nurse’s lul¬ 
laby, while others might have been worth the 
notice of the grave historian. Nothing impressed 
me more than a story of a black mysterious picture 
20 which used to hang in one of the chambers of the 
Province House, directly above the room where we 
were now sitting. The following is as correct a 
version of the fact as the reader would be likely to 
obtain from any other source, although, assuredly, 
25 it has a tinge of romance approaching to the mar¬ 
vellous. 

In one of the apartments of the Province House 
there was long preserved an ancient picture the 
frame of which was as black as ebony, and the can- 
30 vas itself so dark with age, damp and smoke that 
not a touch of the painter’s art could be discerned. 


EDWARD RANDOLPH'S PORTRAIT 


93 


Time had thrown an impenetrable veil over it and 
left to tradition and fable and conjecture to say 
what had once been there portrayed. During the 
rule of many successive governors it had hung, by 
prescriptive and undisputed right, over the man¬ 
tle-piece of the same chamber, and it still kept its 
place when Lieutenant-governor Hutchinson as¬ 
sumed the administration of the province on the 
departure of Sir Francis Bernard. 

The lieutenant-governor sat one afternoon rest¬ 
ing his head against the carved back of his stately 
arm-chair and gazing up thoughtfully at the void 
blackness of the picture. It was scarcely a time 
for such inactive musing, when affairs of the deep¬ 
est moment require the ruler’s decision; for within 
that very hour Hutchinson had received intellgence 
of the arrival of a British fleet bringing three regi¬ 
ments from Halifax to overawe the insubordina¬ 
tion of the people. These troops awaited his per¬ 
mission to occupy the fortress of Castle William 
and the town itself, yet instead of affixing his sig¬ 
nature to an official order, there sat the lieutenant- 
governor so carefully scrutinizing the black waste 
of canvas that his demeanor attracted the notice 
of two young persous who attended him. One, 
wearing a military dress of buff, was his kinsman, 
Francis Lincoln, the provincial captain of Castle 
William ; the other, who sat on a low stool beside 
his chair, was Alice Vane, his favorite niece. She 
was clad entirely in white—a pale, ethereal crea¬ 
ture who, though a native of New England, had 


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20 

25 

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94 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


been educated abroad and seemed not merely a 
stranger from another clime, but almost a being 
from another world. For several years, until left 
an orphan, she had dwelt with her father in sunny 
5 Italy, and there had acquired a taste and enthusi¬ 
asm for sculpture and painting which she found 
few opportunities of gratifying in the undecorated 
dwellings of the colonial gentry. It was said that 
the early productions of her own pencil exhibited 
10 no inferior genius, though perhaps the rude atmos¬ 
phere of New England had cramped her hand and 
dimmed the glowing colors of her fancy. But, ob¬ 
serving her uncle’s steadfast gaze, which appeared 
to search through the mist of years to discover 
15 the subject of the picture, her curiosity was ex¬ 
cited. 

“Is it known, my dear uncle,” inquired she, 
“what this old picture once represented? Possi¬ 
bly, could it be made visible, it might prove a mas- 
20 terpiece of some great artist; else why has it so 
long held such a conspicuous place?” 

As her uncle, contrary to his usual custom—for 
he was as attentive to all the humors and caprices 
of Alice as if she had been his own best-beloved 
25 child—did not immediately reply, the young 
captain of Castle William took that office upon 
himself. 

“This dark old square of canvas, my fair cousin,” 
said he, “has been an heirloom in the Province 
30 House from time immemorial. As to the painter, 
I can tell you nothing; but if half the stories told 


EDWARD RANDOLPH’S PORTRAIT 


95 


of it be true, not one of the great Italian masters 
has ever produced so marvellous a piece of work 
as that before you.” 

Captain Lincoln proceeded to relate some of the 
strange fables and fantasies which, as it was im- 5 
possible to refute them by ocular demonstration, 
had grown to be articles of popular belief in refer¬ 
ence to this old picture. One of the wildest and at 
the same time the best-accredited accounts stated 
it to bean original and authentic portrait of the 10 
Evil One, taken at a witch-meeting near Salem, and 
that its strong and terrible resemblance had been 
confirmed by several of the confessing wizards and 
witches at their trial in open court. It was like¬ 
wise affirmed that a familiar spirit or demon abode 15 
behind the blackness of the picture, and had shown 
himself at seasons of public calamity to more than 
one of the royal governors. Shirley, for instance, 
had beheld this ominous apparition on the eve of 
General Abercrombie’s shameful and bloody defeat 20 
under the walls of Ticonderoga. Many of the 
servants of the Province House had caught glimp¬ 
ses of a visage frowning down upon them at 
morning or evening twilight, or in the depths of 
night while raking up the fires that glimmered on 25 
the hearth beneath, although if any were bold 
enough to hold a torch before the picture, it would 
appear as black and undistinguishable as ever. 
The oldest inhabitant of Boston recollected that 
his father—in whose days the portrait had not 30 
wholly faded out of sight—had once looked upon 


96 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


it, but would never suffer himself to be questioned 
as to the face which was there represented. In 
connection with such stories, it was remarkable 
that over the top of the frame there were some 
5 ragged remnants of black silk, indicating that a 
veil had formerly hung down before the picture 
until the duskiness of time had so effectuallv con- 
cealed it. But, after all, it was the most singular 
part of the affair that so many of the pompous 
10 governors of Massachusetts had allowed the oblit¬ 
erated picture to remain in the state-chamber of 
the Province House. 

“Some of these fables are realyawful,” observed 
Alice Vane, who had occasionally shuddered as well 
15 as smiled while her cousin spoke. “It would be 
almost worth while to wipe away the black sur¬ 
face of the canvas, since the original picture can 
hardly be so formidable as those which fancy paints 
instead of it.” 

20 “But would it be possible,” inquired her cousin, 
“ to restore this dark picture to its pristine hues? ” 

“Such arts are known in Italv,” said Alice. 

The lieutenant-governor had roused himself from 
his abstracted mood, and listened with a smile to 
25 the conversation of his young relatives. Yet his 
voice had something peculiar in its tones when he 
undertook the explanation of the mystery. 

“I am sorry, Alice, to destroy your faith in the 
legends of which you are so fond,” remarked he, 
30 “but my antiquarian researches have long since 
made me acquainted with the subject of this picture 


EDWARD RANDOLPH’S PORTRAIT 


97 


—if picture it can be called—which is no more 
visible, nor ever will be, than the face of the long- 
buried man whom it once represented. It was the 
portrait of Edward Randolph, the founder of this 
house, a person famous in the history of New 
England.” 

ij 

“ Of that Edward Randolph,” exclaimed Captain 
Lincoln, “ who obtained the repeal of the first pro¬ 
vincial charter, under which our forefathers had 
enjoyed almost democratic priviledges—he that 
was styled the arch-enemy of New England, and 
whose memory is still held in detestation as the 
destroyer of our liberties? ” 

“It was the same Randolph,”answered Hutchin¬ 
son, moving uneasily in his chair. “ It was his lot 
to taste the bitterness of popular odium.” 

“ Our annals tells us,” continued the captain of 
Castle William, ”tliat the curse of the people fol¬ 
lowed this Randolph where he went and wrought 
evil in all the subsequent events of his life, and that 
its effect was seen, likewise, in the manner of his 
death. They say, too, that the inward misery of 
that curse worked itself outward and was visible on 
the wretched man’s countenance, making it too 
horrible to be looked upon. If so, and if this 
picture truly represented his aspect, it was in 
mercy that the cloud of blackness lias gathered 
over it.” 

“These traditions are folly to one who has 
proved, as I have, how little of historic truth lies 
at the bottom,” said the lieutenant-governor. 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 

30 


98 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


“As regards the life and character of Edward Ran¬ 
dolph, too implicit credence has been given to Dr. 
Cotton Mather, who—I must say it, though some 
of his blood runs in my veins—has filled our early 
5 history with old woman’s tales as fanciful and ex¬ 
travagant as those of Greece or Rome.” 

“And yet,” whispered Alice Vane, “may not 
such fables have a moral ? And methinks, if the 
visage of this portrait be so dreadful, it is not 
10 without a cause that it has hung so long in a 
chamber of the Province House. When the rulers 
feel themselves irresponsible, it were well that they 
should be reminded of the awful weight of a people’s 
curse.” 

15 The lieutenant-governor started and gazed for a 
moment at his niece, as if her girlish phantasies 
had struck upon some feeling in his own breast 
which all his policy or principles could not entirely 
subdue. He knew, indeed, that Alice, in spite of her 
20 foreign education, retained the native sympathies 
of a New England girl. 

“Peace, silly child!” cried he at last, more 
harshly than he had ever before addressed the 
gentle Alice. “ The rebuke of a king is more to be 
25 dreaded than the clamor of a wild, misguided mul¬ 
titude.—Captain Lincoln, it is decided: the fortress 
of Castle William must be occupied by the royal 
troops. The two remaining regiments shall be bil¬ 
leted in the town or encamped upon the common. 
30 It is time, after years of tumult, and almost re¬ 
bellion, that His Majesty’s government should 
have a wall of strength about it.” 


EDWARD RANDOLPH*S PORTRAIT 


99 


“Trust, sir—trust yet a while to the loyalty of 
the people,” said Captain Lincoln, “nor teach 
them that they can ever be on other terms with 
British soldiers than those of brotherhood, as 
when they fought side by side through the French 5 
war. Do not convert the streets of your native 
town into a camp. Think twice before you give up 
old Castle William, the key of the province, into 
other keeping than that of true-born New Eng¬ 
landers.” 10 

“Young man, it is decided,” repeated Hutchin¬ 
son, rising from his chair. “A British officer will 
be in attendance this evening to receive the neces¬ 
sary instructions for the disposal of the troops. 
Your presence also will be required. Till then, is 
farewell.” 

With these words the lieutenant-governor hastily 
left the room, while Alice and her cousin more 
slowly followed, whispering together, and once 
pausing to glance back at the mysterious picture. 20 
The captain of Castle William fancied that the 
girl’s air and mien were such as might have be¬ 
longed to one of those spirits of fable—fairies or 
creatures of a more antique mythology—w ho some¬ 
times mingled their agency with mortal affairs, 25 
half in caprice, yet with a sensibility to human 
weal or w T oe. As he held the door for her to pass 
Alice beckoned to the picture and smiled. 

“Come forth, dark and evil shape!” cried she, 
“It is thine hour.” 


100 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


In the evening lieutenant-governor Hutchinson 
sat in the same chamber where the foregoing scene 
had occurred, surrounded by several persons whose 
various interests had summoned them together. 
5 There were the selectmen of Boston—plain patri¬ 
archal fathers of the people, excellent representa¬ 
tives of the old puritanical founders whose sombre 
strength had stamped so deep an impress upon 
the New England character. Contrasting with 
10 these were one or two members of council, richly 
dressed in the white wigs, the embroidered waist¬ 
coats and other magnificence of the time, and 
making a somewhat ostentatious display of cour¬ 
tier-like ceremonial. In attendance, likewise, was 
15 a major of the British army, awaiting the lieuten¬ 
ant-governor's orders for the landing of the troops, 
which still remained on board the transports. The 
captain of Castle William stood beside Hutchinson’s 
chair, with folded arms, glancing rather haughtily 
20 at the British officer by whom he was soon to be 
superseded in his command. On a table in the 
centre of the chamber stood a branched silver 
candlestick, throwing down the glow of half a 
dozen waxlights upon a paper apparently ready 
25 for the lieutenant-governor’s signature. 

Partly shrouded in the voluminous folds of one 
of the window-curtains, which fell from the ceiling 
to the floor, was seen the white drapery of a lady’s 
robe. It may appear strange that Alice Yane 
30 should have been there at such a time, but there 
was something so childlike, so wayward, in her 


EDWARD RANDOLPH’S PORTRAIT 101 

singular character, so apart from ordinary rules, 
that her presence did not surprise the few who 
noticed it. Meantime, the chairman of the select¬ 
men was addressing to the lieutenant-governor a 
long and solemn protest against the reception of 
the British troops into the town. 

“And if Your Honor,” concluded this excellent 
but somewhat prosy old gentleman, “ shall see fit 
to persist in bringing the mercenary sworders and 
musketeers into our quiet streets, not on our heads 
be the responsibility. Think, sir, while there is yet 
time, that if one drop of blood be shed, that blood 
shall be an eternal stain upon Your Honor’s mem¬ 
ory. You, sir, have written with an able pen the 
deeds of our forefathers; the more to be desired 
is it, therefore, that yourself should deserve honor¬ 
able mention as a true patriot and upright ruler 
when your own doings shall be written down in 
history.” 

“I am not insensible, my good sir, to the natural 
desire to stand well in the annals of my country,” 
replied Hutchinson, controlling his impatience into 
courtesy, “nor know I any better method of at¬ 
taining that end than by withstanding the merely 
temporary spirit of mischief which, with your 
pardon, seems to have infected older men than 
myself. Would you have me wait till the mob shall 
sack the Province House as they did my private 
mansion? Trust me, sir, the time may come when 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 


16 The deeds of our forefathers. Hutchinson was the author of a well- 
known “ History of Massachusetts Bay.” 




102 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


you will be glad to flee for protection to the king’s 
banner, the raising of which is now so distasteful 
to you.” 

“Yes,” said the British major, who was impa¬ 
tiently expecting the lieutenant-governor’s orders. 
“The demagogues of his province have raised the 
devil, and cannot lay him again. We will exorcise 
him in God’s name and the king’s.” 

“If you meddle with the devil, take care of his 
10 claws,” answered the captain of Castle William, 
stirred by the taunt against his countryman. 

“Craving your pardon, young sir,” said the 
venerable selectman, “let not an evil spirit enter 
into your words. We will strive against the op- 
15 pressor with prayer and fasting, as our forefathers 
would have done. Like them, moreover, we will 
submit to whatever lot a wise providence may 
send us,—always after our own best exertions to 
amend it.” 

20 “And there peep forth the devil’s claws!” mut¬ 
tered Hutchinson, who well understood the nature 
of Puritan submission. “ This matter shall be ex¬ 
pedited forthwith. When there shall be a sentinel 
at every corner and a court of guard before the 
25 towm-house, a loyal gentleman may venture to 
walk abroad. Wha/b to me is the outcry of a mob 
in this remote province of the realm? The king is 
my master, and England is my country; upheld 
by their armed strength, I set my foot upon the 
30 rabble and defy them.” 

He snatched a pen and was about to affix his 


EDWARD RANDOLPH'S PORTRAIT 


103 


signature to the paper that lay on the table, when 
the captain of Castle William placed his hand upon 
his shoulder. The freedom of the action, so con¬ 
trary to ceremonious respect which was then con¬ 
sidered due to rank and dignity, awakened general 5 
surprise, and in none more than in the lieutenant- 
governor himself. I .ooking angrily up, he preceived 
that his young relative was pointing his finger to 
the opposite wall. Hutchinson’s eye followed the 
signal, and he saw what had hitherto been unob-10 
served—that a black silk curtain was suspended 
before the mysterious picture, so as completely to 
conceal it. His thoughts immediately recurred to 
the scene of the preceding afternoon, and in his 
surprise,confused by indistinct emotions, yet sensi -15 
ble that his niece must have had an agency in this 
phenomenon, he called loudly upon her: 

“ Alice! Come hither, Alice! ” 

No sooner had he spoken than Alice Yane glided 
from her station, and, pressing one hand across 20 
her eyes, with the other snatched away the sable 
curtain that concealed the portrait. An exclama¬ 
tion of surprise burst from every beholder, but the 
lieutenant-governor’s voice had a tone of horror. 

“ By Heaven! ” said he, in a low, inward murmur, 25 
speaking rather to himself than to those around 
him; “if the spirit of Edward Randolph were to ap¬ 
pear among us from the place of torment, he could 
not wear more of the terrors of hell upon his face.” 

“For some wise end,” said the aged selectman, 30 
solemnly, “hath Providence scattered away the 


104 


TWICE TOLD TALES 


mist of years that had so long hid this dreadful 
effigy. Until this hour no living man hath seen 
what we behold.” 

Within the antique frame which so recently had 
5 enclosed a sable waste of canvas now appeared a 
visable picture—still dark indeed, in its hues and 
shadings, but thrown forward in strong relief. It 
was a half-length figure of a gentleman in a rich 
but very old fashioned dress of embroidered 
10 velvet, with a broad ruff and a beard, and wearing 
a hat the brim of which overshadowed his forehead. 
Beneath this cloud the eyes had a peculiar glare 
which was almost lifelike. The whole portrait 
started so distinctly out of the background that 
15 it had the effect of a person looking down from the 
wall at the astonished and awe-stricken spectators. 
The expression of the face, if any words can convey 
an idea of it, was that of a wretch detected in some 
hideous guilt and exposed to the bitter hatred and 
20 laughter, and withering scorn of a vast surround¬ 
ing multitude. There was the struggle of defiance, 
beaten down and overwhelmed by the crushing 
weight of ignominy. The torture of the soul had 
come forth upon the countenance. It seemed as if 
25 the picture, while hidden behind the cloud of im¬ 
memorial years, had been all the time acquiring an 
intenser depth and darkness of expression, till now 
it gloomed forth again and threw its evil omen 
over the present hour. Such, if the wild legend 
30 may be credited, was the portrait of Edward Ran¬ 
dolph as he appeared when a people’s curse had 
wrought its influence upon his nature. 


EDWARD RANDOLPH’S PORTRAIT 


105 


“ ’Twould drive me mad, that awful face,” said 
Hutchinson, who seemed fascinated by the contem¬ 
plation of it. 

“Be warned, then,” whispered Alice. “He tram¬ 
pled on a people’s rights. Behold his punishment 5 
and avoid a crime like his.” 

The lieutanant-governor actualy trembled for an 
instant, but, exerting his energy—which was not, 
however, his most characteristic feature—he strove 
to shake off the spell of Randolph’s countenance. 10 
“Girl,” cried he, laughing bitterly, as he turned 
to Alice, “ have you brought hither your painter’s 
art, your Italian spirit of intrigue, your tricks of 
stage effect, and think to influence the councils of 
rulers and the affairs of nations by such shallow 15 
contrivances ? See here! ” 

“ Stay yet a while,” said the selectman as Hut¬ 
chinson again snatched the pen; “for if ever 
mortal man received a warning from a tormented 
soul, your Honor is that man.” 20 

“Away,” answered Hutchinson, fiercely. “Though 
yonder senseless picture cried ‘ Forbear! ’ it should 
not move me! ” 

Casting a scowl of defiance at the pictured face— 
which seemed at that moment to intensify the 25 
horror of its miserable and wicked look—he scraw¬ 
led on the paper, in characters that betokened it a 
deed of desperation, the name of Thomas Hutchin¬ 
son. Then, it is said, he shuddered, as if that 
signature had granted away his salvation. 30 

“It is done, ” said he, and placed his hand upon 
his brow. 


106 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


“May Heaven forgive the deed!” said the soft, 
sad accents of Alice Yane, like the voice of a good 
spirit flitting away. 

When morning came, there was a stifled whisper 
5 through the household, and spreading thence 
about the town, that the dark mysterious picture 
had started from the wall and spoken face to face 
with lieutenant-governor Hutchinson. If such a 
miracle had been wrought, however, no traces of it 
10 remained behind; for within the antique frame 
nothing could be discerned save the impenetrable 
cloud which had covered the canvas since the 
memory of man. If the figure had, indeed, stepped 
forth, it had fled back, spirit-like, at the day-dawn, 
15 and hidden itself behind a century’s obscuritv. 
The truth probably was that Alice Vane’s secret 
for restoring the hues of the picture had merely 
effected a temporary renovation. But those who 
in that brief interval had beheld the awful visage of 
20 Edward Randolph desired no second glance, and 
ever afterward trembled at the recollection of the 
scene as if an evil spirit had appeared visibly 
among them. And, as for Hutchinson, when, far 
over the ocean, his dying-hour drew on, he gasped 
25 for breath and complained that he was choking 
with the blood of the Boston massacre, and 
Francis Lincoln, the former captain of Castle 
William, who was standing at his bed-side, per¬ 
ceived a likeness in his frenzied look to that of 
30 Edward Randolph. Did his broken spirit feel at 
that dread hour the tremendous burden of a 
people’s curse? 


EDWARD RANDOLPH’S PORTRAIT 


107 


At the conclusion of this miraculous legend I in¬ 
quired of mine host whether the picture still re¬ 
mained in the chamber over our heads, but Mr. 
Tiffany informed me that it had long since been re¬ 
moved, and was supposed to be hidden in some 5 
out-of-the way corner of the New England Museum. 
Perchance some curious antiquary may light upon 
it there, and, with the assistance of Mr. Howarth, 
the picture-cleaner, may supply a not unnecessary 
proof of the authenticity of the facts here set down. 10 
During the progress of the story a storm had 
been gathering abroad and raging and rattling so 
loudly in the upper regions of the Province House 
that it seemed as if all the old governors and 
great men were running riot above stairs while 15 
Mr. Bela Tiffany babbled of them below. In the 
course of generations, when many people have 
lived and died in an ancient house, the whistling of 
the wind through its crannies and the creaking of 
its beams and rafters become strangely like the 20 
tones of the human voice, or thundering laughter, 
or heavy footsteps treading the deserted chambers. 

It is as if the echoes of half a century were revived. 
Such were the gostly sounds that roared and mur¬ 
mured in our ears when I took leave of the circle 25 
round the fireside of the Province House, and, 
plunging down the doorsteps, fought my way 
homeward against a drifting snow-storm. 


LADY ELEANORE’S MANTLE 


Mine excellent friend the landlord of the Province 
Rouse was pleased the other evening to invite Mr. 
Tiffany and myself to an oyster-supper. This 
slight mark of respect and gratitude, as he haud- 
5 somely observed, was far less than the ingenious 
tale-teller, and I, the humble note-maker of his 
narratives, had fairly earned by the public notice 
which our joint lucubrations had attracted to his 
establishment. Many a cigar had been smoked 
10 within his premises, many a glass of wine or more 
potent aqua vitoe had been quaffed, many a dinner 
had been eaten, by curious strangers who, save for 
the fortunate conjunction of Mr. Tiffany and me, 
would never have ventured through that darksome 
15 avenue which gives access to the historic precincts 
of the Province House. In short, if any credit be 
due to the courteous assurance of Mr. Thomas 
Waite, we had brought his forgotton mansion 
almost as effectually into public view as if we had 
20 thrown down the vulgar range of shoe-shops and 
dry-goods stores which hides its aristocratic front 
from Washington Street. It may be unadvisable, 
however, to speak too loudly of the increased 
custom of the house, lest Mr. Waite should find it 
25 difficult to renew the lease on so favorable terms 
as heretofore. 


108 



LADY DLL ANODE’S MANTLE 


109 


Being thus welcomed as benefactors, neither Mr. 
Tiffany nor myself felt any scruple in doing full 
justice to the good things that were set before us. 

If the feast were less magnificent than those same 
panelled walls had witnessed in a bygone century; 5 
if mine host presided with somewhat less of state 
than might have befitted a successor of the royal 
governors; if the guests made a less imposing 
show than the bewigged and powdered and em¬ 
broidered dignitaries who erst banqueted at the 10 
gubernatorial table and now sleep within their 
armorial tombs on Copp’s Hill or round King’s 
chapel,—yet never, I may boldly say, did a. more 
comfortable little party assemble in the Province 
House from Queen Anne's days to the Revolution. 15 
The occasion was rendered more interesting by the 
presence of a venerable personage whose own actual 
reminiscences went back to the epoch of Gage and 
Howe, and even supplied him with a doubtful anec¬ 
dote or two of Hutchinson. He was of that small, 20 
and now all but extinguished, class whose attach¬ 
ment. to royalty, and to the colonial institutions 
and customs that were connected with it, had never 
vielded to the democratic heresies of after-times. 
The young Queen of Britain has not a more loyal 25 
subject in her realm—perhaps not one who would 
kneel before her throne with such reverential love 
—as this old graudsire whose head has whitened 
beneath the mild sway of the republic which still in 
his mellower moments he terms a usurpation. 30 
Yet prejudices so obstinate had not made him an 


110 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


ungentle or impracticable companion. If the truth 
must be told, the life of the aged loyalist has been 
of such a scrambling and unsettled character—he 
has had so little choice of friends and been so often 
5 destitute of any—that I doubt whether he would 
refuse a cup of kindness with either Oliver Cromwell 
or John Hancock, to say nothing of any democrat 
now upon the stage. In another paper of this 
series I may perhaps give the reader a closer 
10 glimpse of his portrait. 

Our host in due season uncorked a bottle of 
Madeira of such exquisite perfume and admirable 
flavor that he surely must have discoverd it in an 
ancient bin down deep beneath the deepest cellar 
15 where some jolly old butler stored away the govern¬ 
or’s choicest wine and forgot to reveal the secret 
on his deatli-bed. Peace to his red-nosed ghost and a 
libation to his memory! This precious liquor 
was imbibed by Mr. Tiffany with peculiar zest, and 
20 after sipping the third glass it was his pleasure to 
give us one of the oddest legends which he had yet 
raked from the storehouse where he keeps such 
matters. With some suitable adornments from 
my own fancy, it ran pretty much as follows. 

25 Not long after Colonel Shute had assumed the 
government of Massachusetts Bay—now nearly 
a hundred and twenty years ago—a young lady 
of rank and fortune arrived from England to claim 
his protection as her guardian. He was her distant 
30 relative, but the nearest who had survived the 
gradual extinction of her family; so that no more 


LADY ELEANORE’S MANTLE 


111 


eligible shelter could be found for the rich and high¬ 
born Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe than within the 
Province House of a Transatlantic colony. The 
consort of Governor Shute, moreover, had been as 
a mother to her childhood, and was now anxious 5 
to receive her in the hope that a beautiful young 
woman would be exposed to infinitely less peril 
from the primitive society of New England than 
amid the artifices and corruptions of a court. If 
either the governor or his lady had especially con -10 
suited their own comfort, they would probably 
have sought to devolve the responsibility on other 
hands, since with some noble and splendid traits of 
character Lady Eleanore was remarkable for a 
harsh, unyielding pride, a haughty consciousness 15 
of her hereditary and personal advantages, which 
made her almost incapable of control. Judging 
from many traditionary anecdotes, this peculiar 
temper was hardly less than a monomania; or if 
the acts which it inspired were those of a sane per -20 
son, it seemed due from Providence that pride so 
sinful should be followed by as severe a retribution. 
That tinge of the marvellous which is thrown over 
so many of these half-forgotten legends has prob¬ 
ably imparted an additional wildness to the 25 
strange story of Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe. 

The ship in which she came passenger had arrived 
at Newport, whence Lady Eleanore was conveyed 
to Boston in the governor’s coach, attended by a 
small escort of gentlemen on horseback. The 30 
ponderous equipage, with its four black horses, 


112 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


attracted much notice as it rumbled through Corn- 
hill surrounded by the prancing* steeds of half a 
dozen cavaliers with swords dangling* at their 
stirrups and pistols at their holsters. Through 
5 the large glass windows of the coach, as it rolled 
along, the people could discern the figure of Lady 
Eleanore, strangely combining an almost queenly 
stateliness with the grace and beauty of a maiden 
in her teens. A singular tale had gone abroad 
10 among the ladies of the province that their fair 
rival was indebted for much of the irresistible 
charm of her appearance to a certain article of 
dress—an embroidered mantle—which had been 
wrought by the most skilful artist in London, and 
15 possessed even magical properties of adornment. 
On the present occassion, however, she owed noth¬ 
ing to the witchery of dress, being clad in a riding- 
habit of velvet which would have appeared stiff and 
ungraceful on any other form. 

20 The coachman reined in his four black steeds, 
and the whole cavalcade came to a pause in front 
of the contorted iron balustrade that fenced the 
Province House from the public street. It was 
an awkward coincidence that the bell of the Old 
25 South was just then tolling for a, funeral; so that, 
instead of a gladsome peal with which it was 
. customary to announce the arrival of distinguished 
strangers, Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe was ushered 
by a doleful clang, as if calamity had come em- 
ao bodied in her beautiful person. 

“A very great disrespect 1 ” exclaimed Captain 


LADY ELEANORE'S MANTLE 


113 


Langford, an English Officer who had recently 
brought despatches to Governor Sliute. “The 
funeral should have been deferred lest Lady 
Eleanore’s spirits be affected by such a dismal 
welcome.” 5 

“With your pardon, sir,” replied Dr. Clark, a 
physician and a famous champion of the popular 
party, “whatever the heralds may pretend, a dead 
beggar must have precedence of a living queen. 
King Death confers high privileges.” 10 

These remarks were interchanged while the 
speakers waited a passage through the crowd which 
had gathered on each side of the gateway, leaving 
an open avenue to the portal of the Province 
House. A black slave in livery now leaped fromis 
behind the coach and threw open the door, while 
at the same moment Governor Shute descended 
the flight of steps from his mansion to assist Lady 
Eleanore in alighting. But the governor’s stately 
approach was anticipated in a manner that excited 20 
general astonishment. A pale young man with his 
black hair all in disorder rushed from the throng 
and prostrated himself beside the coach, thus offer¬ 
ing his person as a footstool for Lady Eleanore 
Bochcliffe to tread upon. She held back an instant, 25 
yet with an expression as if doubting whether the 
young man were worthy to bear the weight of her 
footstep rather than dissatisfied to receive such 
awful reverence from a fellow-mortal. 

“Up, sir!” said the governor, sternly, at the30 
same time lifting his cane over the intruder. 

“ What means the Bedlamite by this freak? ” 





114 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


“Nay,” answered Lady Eleanore, playfully, but 
with more scorn than pity in her tone; “Your 
excellency shall not strike him. When men seek 
only to be trampled upon, it were a pity to deny 
5 them a favor so easily granted—and so well 
deserved! ” Then, though as lightly as a sunbeam 
on a cloud, she placed her foot upon the cowering 
form and extended her hand to meet that of the 
governor. 

10 There was a brief interval during which Lady 
Eleanore retained this attitude, and never, surely, 
was there an apter emblem of aristocracy and hered¬ 
itary pride trampling on human sympathies and 
the kindred of nature than these two figures pre- 
15 sen ted at that moment. Yet the spectators were 
so smitten with her beauty, and so essential did 
pride seem to the existance of such a creature, that 
they gave a simultaneous acclamation of applause. 

“Who is this insolent young fellow?” inquired 
20 Captain Langford, who still remained beside Dr. 
Clark. “If he be in his senses, his impertinence 
demands the bastinado; if mad, Ladv Eleanore 
should be secured from further inconvenience by 
his confinement.” 

25 “His name is Jervase Helwyse,” answered the 
doctor—“a youth of no birth or fortune, or other 
advantages save the mind and soul that nature 
gave him, and, being secretary to our colonial 
agent in London, it was his misfortune to meet 
30 this Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe. He loved her, and 
her scorn has driven him mad.” 


LADY JELL ANODE’S MANTLE 


115 


“He was mad so to aspire,” observed the 
English officer. 

“It maybe so,” said Dr. Clark, frowning as he 
spoke; “but I tell you, sir, I could wellnigh doubt 
the justice of the Heaven above us if no signal 
humiliation overtake this ladv who now treads so 

t/ 

haughtily into yonder mansion. She seeks to place 
herself above the sympathies of our common 
nature, which envelops all human souls; see if that 
nature do not assert its claim over her in some 
mode that shall bring her level with the lowest.” 

“Never!” cried Captain Langford,indignantly— 
“neither in life nor when they lay her with her 
ancestors.” 

Not many days afterward the governor gave a 
ball in honor of Lady Eleanore Eochcliffe. The 
principal gentry of the colony received invitations, 
which were distributed to their residences far and 
near by messengers on horseback bearing missives 
sealed with all the formality of official despatches. 
In obedience to the summons, there was a general 
gathering of rank, wealth and beauty, and the wide 
door of the Province House had seldom given 
admittance to more numerous and honorable 
guests than on the evening of Lady Eleanore’s 
ball. Without much extravagance of eulogy, the 
spectacle might even be termed splendid for, 
according to the fashion of the times, the ladies 
shone in rich silks and satins outspread over wide- 
projecting hoops, and the gentlemen glittered in 
gold embroidery laid unsparingly upon the purple 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 

30 



116 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


or scarlet or sky-blue velvet which was the material 
of their coats and waistcoats. The latter article 
of dress was of great importance, since it enveloped 
the wearer’s body nearly to the knees and was 
5 perhaps bedizened with the amount of his whole 
year’s income in golden flowers and foliage. The 
altered taste of the present day—a taste symbolic 
of a deep change in the whole system of society— 
would look upon almost any of those georgeous 
10 figures as ridiculous, although that evening the 
guests sought their reflections in the pier-glasses 
and rejoiced to catch their own glitter amid the 
glittering crowd. What a pity that one of the 
stately mirrors has not preserved a picture of the 
15 scene which by the very traits that were so trans¬ 
itory might have taught us much that would be 
worth knowing and remembering I 

Would, at least, that either painter or mirror 
could convey to us some faint idea of a garment 
20 already noticed in this legend—the LadvEleanore’s 
embroidered mantle, which the gossips whispered 
was invested with magic properties, so as to lend 
a new and untried grace to her figure each time 
that she put it on I Idle fancy as it is, this 
25 mysterious mantle has thrown an awe around mv 

9. 9j 

image of her, partly from its fabled virtues and 
partly because it was the handiwork of a dying 
woman, and perchance owed the fantastic grace 
of its conception to the delirium of approaching 
30 death. 

After the ceremonial greetings had been paid, Lady 


LADY ELEANODE’S MANTLE 


117 


Eleanore Rochcliffe stood apart from the mob of 
guests, insulating herself within a small and distin¬ 
guished circle to whom she accorded a more cordial 
favor than to the general throng. The waxen 
torches threw their radiance vividly over the scene, 5 
bringing out its brilliant points in strong relief, 
but she gazed carelessly, and with now and then 
an expression of weariness or scorn tempered with 
such feminine grace that her auditors scarcely 
perceived the moral deformity of which it was the 10 
utterance. She beheld the spectacle not with vulgar 
ridicule, as disdaining to be pleased with the pro¬ 
vincial mockery of a court-festival, but with the 
deeper scorn of one whose spirit held itself too high 
to participate in the injovment of other human 15 
souls. Whether or no the recollections of those who 
saw her that evening were influenced by the strange 
events with which she was subsequently connected, 
so it was that her figure ever after recurred to 
them as marked by something wild and unnatural, 20 
although at the time the general whisper was of her 
exceeding: beauty and of the indescribable charm 
which her mantle threw around her. Some close 
observers, indeed, detected a feverish flush and 
alternate paleness of countenance, with a corres-25 
ponding flow and revulsion of spirits, and once or 
twice a painful and helpless betrayal of lassitude, as 
if she were on the point of sinking to the ground. 
Then, with a nervous shudder, she seemed to 
arouse her energies, and threw some bright and 30 
playful yet half-wicked sarcasm into the conversa- 




118 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


tion. There was so strange a characteristic in her 
manners and sentiments that it astonished every 
right-minded listener, till, looking into her face, a 
lurking and incomprehensible glance and smile 
5 perplexed them with doubts both as to her serious¬ 
ness and sanity. Gradually, Lady Eleanore Boch- 
cliffe’s circle grew smaller, till only four gentlemen 
remained in it. These were Captain Langford, 
the English officer before mentioned; a Virginian 
10 planter who had come to Massachusetts on some 
political errand; a young Episcopal clergyman, 
the grandson of a British earl; and, lastly, the 
private secretary of Governor Shute, whose obse¬ 
quiousness had won a sort of tolerance from Lady 
is Eleanore. 

At different periods of the evening the liveried 
servants of the Province House passed among the 
guests bearing huge trays of refreshments and 
French and Spanish wines. Lady Eleanore Boch- 
20cliffe,who refused to wet her beautiful lips even with 
a bubble of champagne, had sunk back into a large 
damask chair, apparently overwearied either with 
the excitement of the scene or its tedium; and 
while, for an instant, she was unconscious of voices, 
25 laughter and music, a young man stole forward 
and knelt down at her feet. He bore a salver in his 
hand on which was a chased silver goblet filled lo the 
brim with wine, which he offered as reverentially as 
to a crowned queen—or, rather, with the awful 
30 devotion of a priest doing sacrifice to his idol. 
Concious that some one touched her robe, Lady 


LADY ELEANODE'S MANTLE 


119 


Eleanore started, and unclosed her eyes upon the 
pale, wild features and dishevelled hair of Jervase 
Helwyse. 

“Why do you haunt me thus?” said she, in a 
languid tone, but with a kindlier feeling than she 5 
ordinarily permitted herself to express. “They 
tell me that I have done you harm.” 

“ Heaven knows if that be so,” replied the young 
man, solemnly. “But, Lady Eleanore, in requital 
of that harm, if such there be, and for your own n 
earthly and heavenly welfare, I pray you to take 
one sip of this holy wine and then to pass the gob¬ 
let round among the guests. And this shall be a 
symbol that you have not sought to withdraw 
yourself from the chain of human sympathies, 15 
which whoso would shake off must keep company 
with fallen angels.” 

“Where has this mad fellow stolen that sacra¬ 
mental vessel?” exclaimed the Episcopal clergy¬ 
man. 20 

This question drew the notice of the guests to 
the silver cup, which was recognized as appertain¬ 
ing to the communion-plate of the Old South 
Church, and, for aught that could be known, it was 
brimming over with the consecrated wine. 25 

“Perhaps it is poisoned,” half whispered the 
governor’s secretary. 

“Pour it down the villain’s throat!” cried the 
Virginian, fiercely. 

“ Turn him out of the house! ” cried Captain Lang- 30 
ford, seizing Jervase Hehvvse so roughly by the 


120 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


shoulder that the sacramental cup was overturned 
and its contents sprinkled upon La.dy Eleanore's 
mantle. “ Whether knave, fool or Bedlamite, it is 
intolerable that the fellow should go at large.” 

5 “ Pray, gentlemen, do my poor admirer no harm,” 

said Lady Eleanore, with a faint and weary smile. 
“ Take him out of my sight, if such be your pleas¬ 
ure, for I can find in my heart to do nothing but 
laugh at him, whereas, in all decency and conscience, 
10 it would become me to weep for the mischief I have 
wrought.” 

But while the bystanders were attempting to 
lead away the unfortunate young man he broke 
from them and with a wild, impassioned earnest- 
15 ness offered a new and equally strange petition to 
Ladv Eleanore. It was no other than that she 

•j 

should throw off the mantle, which while he pressed 
the silver cup of wine upon her she had drawn more 
closely around her form, so as almost to shroud 
20 herself within it. 

“Cast it from vou,” exclaimed Jervase Helwvse, 
clasping his hands in an agony of entreaty. “It 
may not yet be too late. Give the accursed gar¬ 
ment to the flames.” 

2 "> But Ladv Eleanore, with a laugh of scorn, drew 
the rich folds of the embroidered mantle over her 
head in such a fashion as to give a completely new 
aspect to her beautiful face, which, half hidden, 
half revealed, seemed to belong to some being of 
30 mysteries character and purposes. 

“ Farewell, Jervase Helwyse! ” said she. “Keep 


LADY ELEANORE’S MANTLE 


121 


my image in your remembrance as you behold it 
now.” 

“Alas, lady!” he replied, in a tone no longer 
wild, but sad as a funeral-bell; “we must meet 
shortly when your face may wear another aspect, 5 
a nd that shall be the image that must abide within 
me.” He made no more resistance to the violent 
efforts of the gentlemen and servants who almost 
dragged him out of the apartment and dismissed 
him roughly from the iron gate of the Province 10 
House. 

Captain Langford, who had been very active in 
this affair, was returning to the presence of Lady 
Eleanore Rochcliffe, when he encountered the phy¬ 
sician, Dr. Clarke, with whom he had held some 15 
casual talk on the dav of her arrival. The doctor 
stood apart, separated from Lady Eleanore by the 
width of the room, but eying her with such keen 
sagacity that Captain Langford involuntarily 
gave lnm credit for the discovery of some deep 20 
secret. 

“You appear to be smitten, after all, with the 
charms of this queenly maiden,” said he, hoping 
thus to draw forth the physician’s hidden knowl¬ 
edge. 2 ') 

“ God forbid ! ” answered Dr. Clarke, with a grave 
smile; “and if you be wise, you will put up the 
same prayer for yourself. Woe to those who shall 
be smitten by this beautiful Lady Eleanore! But 
yonder stands the governor, and I have a word or 30 
two for his private ear. Good-night! ” He accord- 




122 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


inglv advanced to Governor Shute and addressed 
him in so low a tone that none of the bystanders 
could catch a word of what he said, although the 
sudden change of His Excellency’s hitherto cheerful 
5 visage betokened that the communication could be 
of no agreeable import. A very few moments after¬ 
ward it was announced to the guests that an 
unforeseen circumstance rendered it necessary to 
put a premature close to the festival. 

10 The ball at the Province House supplied a topic 
of conversation for the colonial metropolis for 
some days after its occurrence, and might still 
longer have been the general theme, only that a 
subject of all engrossing interest thrust it for a 
15 time from the public recollection. This was the 
appearance of a dreadful epidemic which in that 
age, and long before and afterward, was wont to 
slay its hundreds and thousands on both sides of 
the Atlantic. On the occasion of which we speak it 
20 was distinguished by peculiar virulence, insomuch 
that it has left his traces—its pitmarks, to use an 
appropriate figure—on the history of the country, 
the affairs of which were thrown into confusion by 
its ravages. At first, unlike its ordinary course, 
25 the disease seemed to confine itself to the higher 
circles of society, selecting its victims from among 
the proud, the well-born and the wealthy, entering 
unabashed into stately chambers and lying down 
with the slumberers in silken beds. Some of the 
30 most distinguished guests of the Province House- 
even those whom the haughty Lady Eleanore 


LADY ELEANODE’S MANTLE 


123 


Rockcliffe had deemed not unworthy of her favor— 
were stricken by this fatal scourge. It was noticed 
with an ungenerous bitterness of feeling that the 
four gentlemen—the Virginian, the British officer, 
the young clergyman and the governor’s secretary 
—who had been her most devoted attendants on 
the evening of the ball were the foremost on whom 
the plague-stroke fell. But the disease, pursuing 
its onward progress, soon ceased to be exclusively 
a prerogative of aristocracy. Its red brand was no 
longer conferred like a noble’s star or an order of 
knighthood. It threaded its way through the 
narrow and crooked streets, and entered the low, 
mean, darksome dwellings and laid its hand of 
death upon the artisans and laboring classes of the 
town. It compelled rich and poor to feel them¬ 
selves brethern then, and stalking to and fro across 
the Three Hills with a fierceness which made it 
almost a new pestilence, there was that mighty 
conqueror—that scourge and horror of our fore¬ 
fathers—the small-pox. 

We connot estimate the affright which this 
plague inspired of yore by contemplating it as the 
fangless monster of the present day. We must 
remember, rather, with what awe we watched the 
gigantic foot-steps of the Asiatic cholera striding 
from shore to shore of the Atlantic and marching 
like Destiny upon cities far remote which flight had 
already half depopulated. There is no other fear 

is Three Hills. Boston was originally called Trimountain because of 
formation of the land on which it is built. 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 



124 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


so horrible and unhumanizing as that which makes 
man dread to breathe heaven’s vital air lest it be 
poison, or to grasp the hand of a brother or friend 
lest the grip of the pestilence should clutch him. 

5 Such was the dismav that now followed in the 
track of the disease or ran before it throughout the 
town. Graves were hastily dug and the pestilential 
relics as hastilv covered, because' the dead were 
enemies of the living and strove to draw them 
10 headlong, as it were, into their own dismal pit. 
The public councils were suspended, as if mortal 
wisdom might relinquish its devices now that an 
unearthly usurper had found his way into the 
ruler’s mansion. Had an enemy’s fleet been hover- 
15 ing on the coast or his armies trampling on our 
soil, the people would probably have committed 
their defence to that same direful conqueror who 
had wrought their own calamity and would permit 
no interference with this sway. This conqueror 
20 had a symbol of his triumphs: it was a blood-red 
flag that fluttered in the tainted air over the door 
of every dwelling into which the small-pox had 
entered. 

Such a banner was long since waving over the 
25 portal of the Province House, for thence, as was 
proved by tracing its footsteps back, had all this 
dreadful mischief issued. It had been traced back 
to a lady’s luxurious chamber, to the proudest of the 
proud, to her that was so delicate and hardly 
30 owned herself of earthlvmould, to the haughtvone 
who took her stand above human sympathies—to 


LADYELEANORE’S MANTLE 


125 


Lady Eleanore. There remained no room for 
doubt that the contagion had lurked in that gor¬ 
geous mantle which threw so strange a grace 
around her at the festival. Its fantastic splendor 
had been conceived in the delirious brain of a 
woman on her death-bed and was the last toil of 
her stiffening fingers, which had interwoven fate 
and misery with its golden threads. This dark 
tale, whispered at first, was now bruited far and 
wide. The people raved against the Lady Eleanore, 
and cried out that her pride and scorn had 
evoked a fiend, and that between them both this 
monstrous evil had been born. At times their 
rage and despair took the semblance of grinning 
mirth; and whenever the red flag of the pestilence 
was hoisted over another and yet another door, 
they clapped their hands and shouted through the 
streets in bitter mockery: “ Behold a new triumph 
for the Lady Eleanore! ” 

One day in the midst of these dismal times a wild 
figure approached the portal of the Province House, 
and, folding his arms, stood contemplating the 
scarlet banner, which a passing breeze shook fit¬ 
fully, as if to fling abroad the contagion that it 
typified. At length, climbing one of the pillars by 
means of the iron balustrade, he took down the 
flag, and entered the mansion waving it above his 
head. At the foot of the staircase he met the 
governor, booted and spurred, with his cloak 
drawn around him, evidently on the point of set¬ 
ting forth upon a journey. 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 

30 


126 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


“Wretched lunatic, what do you seek here?” 
exclaimed Shute, extending his cane to guard 
himself from contact. “ There is nothing here but 
Death; back, or you will meet him.” 

5 “Death will not touch me, the banner-bearer of 
the pestilence,” cried Jar vase Helwyse, shaking the 
red flag aloft. “Death and the pestilence, who 
wears the aspect of the Lady Eleanore, will walk 
through the streets to-night, and I must march 
10before them with this banner.” 

“Why do I waste words on the fellow?” mut¬ 
tered the governor, drawing his cloak across his 
mouth. “What matters his miserable life, when 
none of us are sure of twelve hours’ breath?—On, 
15 fool, to your own destruction? ” 

He made w T ay for Jarvase Helwyse, who immedi- 
atly ascended the staircase, but on the first landing- 
place was arrested by the firm grasp of a hand 
upon his shoulder. Looking fiercely up with a 
20 madman’s impulse to struggle with and rend asun¬ 
der his opponent, he found himself powerless 
beneath a calm, stern eye which possessed the 
mysterious property of quelling frenzy at its height. 

The person whom lie had now encountered was 
25 the physician, Dr. Clarke, the duties of whose sad 
profession had led him to the Province House, 
where he was an infrequent guest in more pros¬ 
perous times. 

“ Young man, what is your purpose ? ” demanded 
30 he. 

“I seek the Lady Eleanore,” answered Javase 
Helwyse, submissively 


LADY ELEANORE'S MANTLE 


127 


“All have fled from her,” said the physician. 
Why do 3 7 ou seek her now? I tell you, youth, her 
nurse fell death-stricken on the threshold of that 
fatal chamber. Know ye not that never came such 
a curse to our shores as this lovely Lady Eleanore, 5 
that her breath has filled the air with poison, that 
she has shaken pestilence and death upon the land 
from the folds of her accursed mantle? ” 

“Letmelook upon her,” rejoined the mad youth, 
more wildly. “Let me behold her in her awful 10 
beauty, clad in the regal garments of the pestilence. 
She and Death sit on a throne together; let me 
kneel down before them.” 

“ Poor youth! ” said Dr. Clark, and, moved by a 
deep sense of human weakness, a smile of caustic 15 
humor curled his lips even then. “Wilt thou still 
worship the destroyer and surround her image with 
fantasies the more magnificent the more evil she 
has wrought? Thus man doth ever to his tyrants. 
Approach, then. Madness, as I have noted, has 20 
that good efficacy that it will guard you from con¬ 
tagion, and perhaps its own cure may be found 
in yonder chamber.” Ascending another flight of 
stairs, he threw open a door and signed to Jervase 
Helwyse that he should enter. 25 

The poor lunatic, it seems probable, had cher¬ 
ished a delusion that his haughty mistress sat in 
state, unharmed herself by the pestilential influ¬ 
ence which as by enchantment she scattered round 
about her. He dreamed, no d oubt, that her beauty 30 
was not dimmed, but brightened into superhuman 


128 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


splendor. With such anticipations he stole rever¬ 
entially to the door at which the physician stood, 
but paused upon the threshold, gazing fearfully 
into the gloom of the darkened chamber. 

5 “ Where is the Lady Eleanore ? ” whispered he. 

“Call her,” replied the physician. 

“Lady Eleanore! princess! queen of Death!” 
cried Jervase Helwyse, advancing three steps into 
the chamber. “ She is not here. There, on yonder 
10 table, I behold the sparkle of a diamond which 
once she wore upon her bosom. There”—and he 
shuddered—“there hangs her mantle, on which a 
dead woman embroidered a spell of dreadful poten¬ 
cy. But where is the Lady Eleanore? ” 

15 Something stirred within the silken curtains of a 
canopied bed and a low moan was uttered, which, 
listening intently, Jervase Helwyse began to dis¬ 
tinguish as a woman’s voice complaining dolefully 
of thirst. He fancied, even, that he recognized its 
20 tones. 

“ My throat! My throat is scorched,” murmured 
the voice. “A drop of water! ” 

“ What thing art tliou? ” said the brain-stricken 
youth, drawing near the bed and tearing asunder 
25its curtains. “Whose voice hast thou stolen for 
thy murmurs and miserable petitions, as if Lady 
Eleanore could be conscious of mortal infirmity? 
Eie! Heap of diseased mortality, why lurkest thou 
in my lady’s chamber? ” 

30 “ Oh, Jervase Helwyse,” said the voice—and as it 

spoke the figure contorted itself, struggling to hide 


LADY ELEANOBE’S MANTLE 


129 


its blasted face—“ look not now on the woman you 
once loved. The curse of heaven hath stricken me 
because I would not call man my brother nor wo¬ 
man sister. I wrapped myself in pride as in a 
mantle and scorned the sympathies of nature, and 
therefore has Nature made this wretched bodv the 
medium of a dreadful sympathy. You are avenged, 
they are all avenged, Nature is avenged; for 1 am 
Eleanore Rochcliffe.” 

The malice of his mental disease, the bitterness 
lurking at the bottom of his heart, mad as he was, 
for a blighted and ruined life and love that had 
been paid with cruel scorn, awoke within the 
breast of Jervase Helwyse. He shook his finger at 
the wretched girl, and the chamber echoed, the cur¬ 
tains of the bed were shaken, with his outburst of 
insane merriment. 

‘ ‘ Another triumph for the Lady Eleanore!” he 
cried. “ All have been her victims; who so worthy 
to be the final victim as herself? ” Impelled by 
some new fantasy of his crazed intellect, he snatched 
the fatal mantle and rushed from the chamber 
and the house. 

That night a procession passed by torchlight 
through the streets, bearing in the midst the figure 
of a woman enveloped with a richly-embroidered 
mantle, while in advance stalked Jervase Helwyse 
waving the red flag of the pestilence. Arriving 
opposite the Province House, the mob burned the 
effigy, and a strong wind came and swept away 
the ashes. It was said that from that very hour 


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20 

25 

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130 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


the pestilence abated, as if its sway had some mys¬ 
terious connection, from the first plague-stroke to 
the last, with Lady Eleanore’s mantle. A remark¬ 
able uncertainty broods over that unhappy lady’s 
5 fate. There is a belief, however, that in a certain 
chamber of this mansion a female form may some¬ 
times be duskily discerned shrinking into the dark¬ 
est corner and muffling her face within an embroid¬ 
ered mantle. Supposing the legend true, can this 
10 be other than the once proud Lady Eleanore? 

Mine host and the old loyalist and I bestowed no 
little warmth of applause upon this narrative, in 
which we had all been deeply interested; for the 
reader can scarcly conceive how unspeakably the 
15 the effect of such a tale is heightened when, as in 
the present case, we may repose perfect confidence 
in the veracity of him who tells it. For my own 
part, knowing how scrupulous is Mr. Tiffany to set. 
tie the foundation of his facts, I could not have 
20 believed him one whit the more faithfully had he 
professed himself an eye-witness of the doings and 
sufferings of poor Lady Eleanore. Some sceptics, 
it is true, might demand documentary evidence, or 
even require him to produce the embroidered 
25 mantle, forgetting that—Heaven be praised!—it 
was consumed to ashes. 

But now the old loyalist, whose blood was 
warmed by the good cheer, began to talk, in his 
turn, about the traditions of the Province House, 
30 and hinted that he, if it were agreeable, might add 
a few reminiscences to our legendary stock. Mr. 


OLD ESTHER DUDLEY 


131 


Tiffany, having no cause to dread a rival, immedi¬ 
ately besought him to favor us with a specimen; 
my own entreaties, of course, were urged to the 
same effect; and our venerable guest, well pleased 
to find willing auditors, awaited only the return of 5 
Mr. Thomas Waite, who had been summoned forth 
to provide accomodations for several new arrivals. 
Perchance the public—but be this as its own caprice 
and ours shall settle the matter—may read the 
result in another tale of the Province House. 10 


OLD ESTHER DUDLEY 


Our host having resumed the chair, he as well as 
Mr. Tiffany and myself expressed much eagerness 
to be made acquainted with the story to which the 
loyalist had alluded. That venerable man first of 
all saw fit to moisten his throat with another glass 15 
of wine, and then turning his face toward our coal- 
fire, looked steadfastly for a few moments into the 
depths of its cheerful glow. Finally he poured 
forth a great fluency of speech. The generous 
liquid that he had imbibed, while it warmed his 20 
age-chilled blood, likewise took off the chill from his 
heart and mind, and gave him an energy to think 




132 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


and feel which we could hardly have expected to find 
beneath the snows of fourscore winters. His feel¬ 
ings, indeed, appeared to me more excitable than 
those of a younger man—or, at least, the same de- 
5 gree of feeling manifested itself by more visible 
effects than if his judgment and will had possessed 
the potency of meridian life. At the pathetic pas¬ 
sages of his narrative he readily melted into tears. 
When a breath of indignation swept across his 
10 spirit, the blood flushed his withered visage even 
to the roots of his white hair, and he shook his 
clinched fist at the trio of peaceful auditors, seem¬ 
ing to fancy enemies in those who felt very kindly to¬ 
ward the desolate old soul. But ever and anon, 
15 sometimes in the midst of his most earnest talk, 
this ancient person’s intellect would wonder vague¬ 
ly, losing its hold of the matter in hand and 
groping for it amid misty Shadows. Then would 
he cackle forth a feeble laugh and express a doubt 
20 whether his wits—for by that phrase it pleased our 
ancient friend to signify his mental powers—were 
not getting a little the worse for wear. 

Under these disadvantages, the old loyalist’s 
story required more revision to render it fit for the 
25 public eye than those of the series which have pre¬ 
ceded it; nor should it be concealed that the senti¬ 
ment and tone of the affair may have undergone 
some slight—or perchance more than slight—meta¬ 
morphosis in its transmission to the reader, 
30 through the medium of a thorough-going democrat. 
The tale itself is a mere sketch with no involution 


OLD ESTHEB DUDLEY 


133 


of plot nor any great interest of events, yet pos 
sessing, if 1 have rehearsed it aright, that pensive 
influence over the mind which the shadow of the 
old Province House flings upon the loiterer in its 
courtyard. 5 

The hour had come—the hour of defeat and hu¬ 
miliation—when Sir William Howe was to pass 
over the threshold of the Province House and em¬ 
bark, with no such triumphal ceremonies as he 
once promised himself, on board the British fleet. io 
He bade his servants and military attendants go 
before him, and lingered a moment in the loneli¬ 
ness of the mansion to quell the fierce emotions 
that struggled in his bosom as with a deaththrob. 
Preferable then would he have deemed his fate had 15 
a warrior’s death left him a claim to the narrow 
territory of a grave within the soil which the king 
had given him to defend. With an ominous per¬ 
ception that as his departing footsteps echoed 
down the staircase the sway of Britain was passing 20 
forever from New England, he smote his clinched 
hand on his brow and cursed the destiny that had 
flung the shame of a dismembered empire upon 
him. 

“ Would to God,” cried he, hardly repressing his 25 
tears of rage, “ that the rebels were even now at 
the doorstep! A blood-stain upon the floor should 
then bear testimony that the last British ruler was 
faithful to his trust.” 

The tremulous voice of a woman replied to his30 
exclamation, 


134 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


“Heaven’s cause and the king’s are one,” it said. 
“ Go forth, Sir William Howe, and trust in Heaven 
to bring back a royal governor in triumph.” 

Subduing at once the passion to which he had 
5 yielded only in the faith that it was unwitnessed, 
Sir William Howe became conscious that an aged 
woman leaning on a gold-headed staff was stand¬ 
ing betwixt him and the door. It was old Esther 
Dudley, who had dwelt almost immemorial years 
loin this mansion, until her presence seemed as in¬ 
separable from it as the recollections of its history. 
She was the daughter of an ancient and once em¬ 
inent family which had fallen into poverty and 
decay, and left its last descendant no resource save 
15 the bounty of the king, nor any shelter except 
within the walls of the Province House. An office 
in the household with merelv nominal duties had 
been assigned to her as a pretext for the payment 
of a small pension, the greater part of which she 
20 expended in adorning herself with an antique mag¬ 
nificence of attire. The claims of Esther Dudley’s 
gentle blood were acknowledged by all the succes¬ 
sive governors, and they treated her with the 
punctilious courtesy which it was her foible to de- 
25 mand, not always with success, from a neglectful 
world. The only actual share which she assumed 
in the business of the mansion was to glide through 
its passages and public chambers late at night to 
see that the servants had dropped no fire from 
30 their flaring torches nor left embers crackling and 
blazing on the hearths. Perhaps it was this invari- 


OLD ESTHER DUDLEY 


135 


able custom of walking her rounds in the hush of 
midnight that caused the superstition of the times 
to invest the old woman with attributes of awe 
and mystery, fabling that she had entered the por¬ 
tal of the Province House—none knew whence—in 
the train of the first royal governor, and that it 
was her fate to dwell there till the last should have 
departed. 

But Sir William Howe, if he ever heard this le¬ 
gend, had forgotten it. 

“Mistress Dudley, why are you loitering here?” 
asked he, with some severity of tone. “It is my 
pleasure to be the last in this mansion of the king.” 

“Not so, if it please Your Excellency,” answered 
the time-stricken woman. ‘ ‘ This roof has sheltered 
me long; I will not pass from it until they bear me 
to the tomb of my forefathers. What other shelter 
is there for old Esther Dudley save the Province 
House or the grave? ” 

“Now, Heaven forgive me!” said Sir William 
Howe to himself. “I was about to leave this 
wretched old creature t< starve or beg.—Take this, 
good Mistress Dudley,” he added, putting a purse 
into her hands. “ King George’s head on these gold¬ 
en guineas is sterling yet, and will continue so, I war¬ 
rant you, even should the rebels crown John Han¬ 
cock their king. That purse will buy a better 
shelter than the Province House can now afford.” 

“ While the burden of life remains upon me I will 
have no other shelter than this roof,” persisted 
Esther Dudley, striking her staff upon the floor 


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15 

20 

25 

30 


136 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


with a gesture that expressed immovable resolve; 
“and when Your Excellency returns in triumph, I 
will totter into the porch to welcome you.” 

“My poor old friend!” answered the British 
5 general, and all his manly and martial pride could 
no longer restrain a gush of bitter tears. “ This is 
an evil hour for you and me. The province which 
the king entrusted to my charge is lost. I go hence 
in misfortune—perchance in disgrace—to return no 
10 more. And you, whose present being is incorpo¬ 
rated with the past, who have seen governor after 
governor in stately pageantry ascend these steps, 
whose whole life has been an observance of majestic 
ceremonies and a worship of the king,—how will 
15you endure the change? Come with us; bid fare¬ 
well to a land that has shaken off its allegiance, 
and live still under a royal government at 
Halifax.” 

“Never! never!” said the pertinacious old dame. 
20 “ Here will I abide, and King George shall still have 
one true subject in his disloyal Province.” 

“Beshrew the old fool!” muttered Sir William 
Howe, growing impatient of her obstinacy and 
ashamed of the emotion into which he had been 
25 betrayed. “ She is the very moral of old-fashioned 
prejudice, and could exist nowhere but in this 
musty edifice.—Well, then, Mistress Dudley, since 
you will needs tarry, I give the Province House in 
charge to you. Take this key, and keep it safe 
so until myself or some other royal governor shall 
demand it of you.” Smiling bitterly at himself and 


OLD ESTHER DUDLEY 137 

her, lie took the key of the Province House, and, 
delivering it into the old lady’s hands drew his 
cloak around him for departure. 

As the general glanced back at Esther Dudley’s 
antique figure he deemed her well fitted for such a 5 
charge, as being so perfect a representative of the 
decayed past—of an age gone by, with its manners, 
opinions, faith and feelings all fallen into oblivion 
or scorn, of what had once been a reality, but was 

7 c/ 7 

now merely a vision of faded magnificence. Then io 
Sir William Howe strode forth, smiting his clinched 
hands together in the fierce anguish of his spirit, 
and old Esther Dudley was left to keep watch in 
the lonely Province House, dwelling there with 
Memory; and if Hope ever seemed to flit around 15 
her, still it was Memory in disguise. 

The total change of affairs that ensued on the 
departure of the British troops did not drive the 
venerable lady from her stronghold. There was 
not for many years afterward a governor of 20 
Massachusetts, and the magistrates who had 
charge of such matters saw no objection to Esther 
Dudley’s residence in the Province House, especially 
as they must otherwise have paid a hireling for 
taking care of the premises, which with her was a 25 
labor of love; and so they left her the undisturbed 
mistress of the old historic edifice. Many and 
strange were the fables which the gossips whispered 
about her in all the chimney-corners of the town. 

Among the time-worn articles of furniture that 30 
had been left in the mansion, there was a tall 


138 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


antique mirror which was well worthy of a tale by 
itself, and perhaps may hereafter be the theme of 
one. The gold of its heavily-wrought frame was 
tarnished, and its surface so blurred that the old 
5 woman’s figure, whenever she paused before it, 
looked indistinct and ghostlike. But it was the 
general belief that Esther could cause the governors 
of the overthrown dynasty, with the beautiful 
ladies who had once adorned their festivals, the 
10 Indian chiefs who had come up to the Province 
House to hold council or swear allegiance, the grim 
Provincial warriors, the severe clergymen—in 
short, all the pageantry of gone days, all the 
figures that ever swept across the broad plate of 
15 glass in former times,—she could cause the whole 
to reappear and people the inner world of the 
mirror with shadows of old life. Such legends as 
these, together with the singularity of her insolated 
existence, her age and the infirmity that each 
20 added winter flung upon her, made Mistress Dudley 
the object both of fear and pity, and it was partly 
the result of either sentiment that, amid all the 
angry licence of the times, neither wrong nor 
insult ever fell upon her unprotected head. Indeed, 
25 there was so much haughtiness in her demeanor 
toward intruders—among whom she reckoned all 
persons acting under the new authorities—that it 
was really an affair of no small nerve to look her 
in the face. And, to do the people justice, stern 
30 republicans as they had now become, they were 
well content that the old gentlewoman, in her 


OLD ESTHER DUDLEY 


139 


hoop-petticoat and faded embroidery, should still 
haunt the palace of ruined pride and over-thrown 
power, the symbol of a departed system, embody¬ 
ing a history in her person. So Esther Dudley 
dwelt year after year in the Province House, still 
reverencing all that others had flung aside, still 
faithful to her king, who, so long as the venerable 
dame yet held her post, might be said to retain one 
true subject in New England and one spot of the 
empire that had been wrested from him. 

And did she dwell there in utter loneliness? Ru¬ 
mor said, “Not so.” Whenever her chill and 
withered heart desired warmth, she was wont to 
summon a black slave of Governor Shirley’s from 
the blurred mirror and send him in search of guests 
who had long ago been familiar in those deserted 
chambers. Forth went the sable messenger, with 
the starlight or the moonshine gleaming through 
him, and did his errand in the burial grounds, knock¬ 
ing at the iron doors of tombs, or upon the marble 
slabs that covered them, and whispering to those 
within, “My mistress, old Esther Dudley,bids you 
to the Province House at midnight;” and punc¬ 
tual^ as the clock of the Old South told twelve 
came the shadows of the Olivers, the Hutcliinsons, 
the Dudleys—all the grandees of a bygone genera¬ 
tion—gliding through the portal into the well- 
known mansion, where Esther mingled with them 
as if she likewise were a shade. Without vouching 
for the truth of such traditions it is certain that 
Mistress Dudley sometimes assembled a few of the 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 

30 


140 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


staunch though crestfallen old Tories who had 
lingered in the rebel town during* those days of 
wrath and tribulation. Out of a cobwebbed bottle 
containing liquor that a royal governor might have 
5 smacked his lips over they quaffed healths to the 
king and babbled treason to the republic, feeling as 
if the protecting shadow of the throne were still 
flung around them. But, draining the last drops 
of their liquor, they stole timorously homeward, 
10 and answered not again if the rude mob reviled them 
in the street. 

Yet Esther Dudley’s most frequent and favored 
guests were the children of the town. Toward 
them she was never stern. A kind and loving 
15 nature hindered elsewhere from its free course by a 
thousand rocky prejudices lavished itself upon 
these little ones. By bribes of gingerbread of her 
own making stamped with a royal crown, she tempt¬ 
ed their sunny sportiveness beneath the gloomy 
20 portal of the Province House, and would often 
beguile them to spend a whole play-day there, 
sitting in a circle round the verge of her hoop- 
petticoat, greedily attentive to her stories of a 
dead world. And when these little boys and girls 
25 stole forth again from the dark mysterious man¬ 
sion, they went bewildered, full of old feelings that 
graver people had long ago forgotten, rubbing 
their eves at the world around them as if thev had 
gone astray into ancient times and become children 
30 of the past. At home when their parents asked 
where they had loitered such a weary while and 



OLD ESTHER DUDLEY 


141 


with whom they had been at play, the children 
would talk of all the departed worthies of the 
province, as far back as Governor Belcher and the 
haughty dame of Sir William Phipps. It would 
seem as though they had been sitting on the knees 5 
of these famous personages, whom the grave had 
hidden for half a century, and had toyed with 
the embroidery of their rich waist-coats or rogu¬ 
ishly pulled the long curls of their flowing wigs. 

“ But Governor Belcher has been dead this many 10 
a year,” would the mother say to her little boy. 
“And did you really see him at the Province 
House?”—“Oh yes, dear mother—yes!” the half- 
dreaming child would answer. “But when old 
Esther had done speaking about him, he faded 15 
away out of his chair.” Thus without affrighting 
her little guests, she led them by the hand into the 
chambers of her own desolate heart and made 
childhood’s fancy discern the ghosts that haunted 
there. 20 

Living so continually in her own circle of ideas, 
and never regulating her mind by a proper reference 
to present things, Esther Dudley appears to have 
grown partially crazed. It was found that she had 
no right sense of the progress and true state of the 25 
Revolutionary war, but held a constant faith that 
the armies of Britain were victorious on every field 
and destined to be ultimately triumphant. When¬ 
ever the town rejoiced for a battle won by 
Washington or Gates or Morgan or Greene, the 30 
news, in passing through the door of the Province 


142 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


House, as through the ivory gate of dreams, be¬ 
came metamorphosed into a strange tale of the 
prowess of Howe, Clinton, or Cornwallis. Sooner 
or later, it was her invincible belief, the colonies 
5 would be prostrate at the footstool of the king. 
Sometimes she seemed to take for granted that 
such was already the case. On one occasion she 
startled the townspeople by a brilliant illumina¬ 
tion of the Province House with candles at every 
10 pane of glass, and a transparency of the king’s 
initials and a crown of light in the great balcony 
window. The figure of the aged woman in the 
most gorgeous of her mildewed velvets and bro¬ 
cades was seen passing from casement to casement, 
15 until she paused before the balcony and flourished 
a huge key above her head. Her wrinkled visage 
actually gleamed with triumph, as if the soul 
within her were a festal lamp. 

“What means this blaze of light? What does 
20old Esther’s joy portend? ” whispered a spectator. 
“It is frightful to see her gliding about the 
chambers and rejoicing there without a soul to 
bear her company.” 

“It is as if she were making merry in a tomb,” 
25 said another. 

“Pshaw! It is no such mystery,” observed an 
old man, after some brief exercise of memory. 
“Mistress Dudley is keeping jubilee for the king of 
England’s birthday.’’ 

30 Then the people laughed aloud, and would have 
thrown mud against the blazing transparency of 


OLD ESTHER DUDLEY 


143 


the king's croAvn and initials, only that they pitied 
the poor old dame who was so dismally triumphant 
amid the wreck and ruin of the system to which she 
appertained. 

Oftentimes it was her custom to climb the weary 5 
stair-case that wound upward to the cupola, and 
thence strain her dimmed eyesight seaward and 
country ward, watching for a British fleet or for the 
march of a grand procession with the king’s 
banner floating over it. The passengers in the 10 
street below would discern her anxious visage and 
send up a shout: “ When the golden Indian on the 
Province House shall shoot his arrow, and when 
the cock on the Old South spire shall crow, then 
look for a royal governor again!” for this had 15 
grown a by-word through the town. And at last, 
after long, long years, old Esther Dudley knew—or 
perchance she only dreamed—that a royal governor 
was on the eve of returning to the Province House 
to receive the heavy key which Sir William Howe 20 
had committed to her charge. Now t , it was the 
fact that intelligence bearing some faint analogy to 
Esther’s version of it was current among the towns¬ 
people. She set the mansion in the best order that 
her means allowed, and, arraying herself in silks 25 
and tarnished gold, stood long before the blurred 
mirror to admire her own magnificence. As she 
gazed, the gray and withered lady moved her ashen 
lips, murmuring half aloud, talking to shapes that 
she saw within the mirror, to shadows of her own 30 
fantasies, to the household friends of memory, and 


144 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


bidding them rejoice with her and come forth to 
meet the governor. And while absorbed in this 
communion Mistress Dudley heard the tramp of 
many footsteps in the street, and looking out at 
5 the window, beheld what she construed as the 
royal governor’s arrival. 

“Oh, happy day! Oh, blessed, blessed hour!” 
she exclaimed. “Let me but bid him welcome 
within the portal, and my task in the Province 
10 House and on earth is done.” Then, with totter¬ 
ing feet which age and tremulous joy caused to 
tread amiss, she hurried down the grand staircase, 
her silks sweeping and rustling as she went; so 
that the sound was as if a train of special courtiers 
15 were thronging from the dim mirror. 

And Esther Dudley fancied that as soon as the 
wide door should be flung open all the pomp and 
splendor of bygone times would pace majestically 
into the Province House and the gilded tapestry 
20 of the past would be brightened by the sunshine of 
the present. She turned the key, withdrew it from 
the lock, unclosed the door and stepped across the 
threshold. Advancing up the courtyard appeared 
a person of most dignified mien, with tokens, as 
25 Esther interpreted them, of gentle blood, high rank 
and long-accustomed authority even in his walk 
and every gesture. He was richly dressed, but 
wore a gouty shoe, which, however, did not lessen 
the stateliness of his gait. Around and behind him 
30 were people in plain civic dresses and two or three 
war-worn veterans—evidently officers of rank—ar- 


OLD ESTHER DUDLEY 


145 


rayed in a uniform of blue and buff. But Esther 
Dudley, firm in the belief that had fastened its 
roots about her heart, beheld ouly the principal 
personage, and never doubted that this was the 
long-looked-for governor to whom she was to sur-5 
render up her charge. As he approached she invol¬ 
untarily sank down on her knees and tremblingly 
held forth the heavy key. 

“ Receive my trust! Take it quickly,” cried she, 
“for methinks Death is striving to snatch away 10 
my triumph. But he comes too late. Thank 
Heaven for this blessed hour! God save King 
George! ” 

“That, madam, is a strange prayer to be offered 
up at such a moment,” replied the unknown guest 15 
of the Province House, and, courteously removing 
his hat, lie offered his arm to raise the aged woman. 
“Yet, in reverence for your gray hairs and long- 
kept faith, Heaven forbid that any here should say 
you nay. Over the realms which still acknowledge 20 
his sceptre, God save King George! ” 

Esther Dudley started to her feet, and, hastily 
clutching back the key, gazed with fearful earnest¬ 
ness at the stranger, and dimly and doubtfully, as 
if suddenly awakened from a dream, her bewildered 25 
eyes half recognized his face. Years ago she had 
known him among the gentry of the Province, but 
the ban of the king had fallen upon him. How, 
then, came the doomed victim here? Proscribed, 
excluded from mercy, the monarch’s most dread -30 
ed and hated foe, this New England merchant had 


146 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


stood triumphantly against a kingdom’s strength, 
and his foot now trod upon humbled royalty as he 
ascended the steps of the Province House, the 
people’s chosen governor of Massachusetts. 

6 “Wretch, wretch that lam!” muttered the old 
woman, with such a heartbroken expression that 
the tears gushed from the stranger’s eyes. “ Have 
I bidden a traitor welcome?—Come, Death! come 
quickly! ” 

10 “ Alas, venerable lady! ” said Governor Hancock, 

lending her his support with all the reverence that 
a courtier would have shown to a queen, “your life 
has been prolonged until the world has changed 
around you. You have treasured up all that time 
15 has rendered worthless—the principles, feelings, 
manners, modes of being and acting which another 
generation has flung aside—and you are a symbol of 
the past. And I and these around me—we represent 
a new race of men, living no longer in the past, 
20 scarcely in the present, but projecting our lives 
forward into the future. Ceasing to model our¬ 
selves on ancestral superstitions, it is our faith and 
principle to press onward—onward.—Yet,” con¬ 
tinued he,turning to his attendants, “let us rever- 
25ence for the last time the stately and gorgeous 
prejudices of the tottering past.” 

While the republican governor spoke he had con¬ 
tinued to support the helpless form of Esther 
Dudley; her weight grew heavier against his arm, 
30 but at last, with a sudden effort to free herself, the 
ancient woman sank down beside one of the pillars, 


OLD ESTHER DUDLEY 


147 


of the portal. The key of the Province House fell 
from her grasp and clanked against the stone. 

“I have been faithful unto death,” murmured 
she. “ God save the king! ” 

“She hath done her office,” said Hancock sol-6 
emnly. “ We will follow her reverently to the tomb 
of her ancestors, and then, my fellow-citizens, on¬ 
ward—onward. We are no longer children of the 
past.” 

As the old loyalist concluded his narrative theio 
enthusiasm which had been fitfully flashing within 
his sunken eyes and quivering across his wrinkled 
visage faded away, as if all the lingering fire of his 
soul were extinguished. Just then, too, a lamp 
upon the mantle-piece threw out a dying gleam, 15 
which vanished as speedily as it shot upward, 
compelling our eyes to grope for one another’s 
features by the dim glow of the hearth. With such 
a lingering fire methought, with such a dying 
gleam, had the glory of the ancient system van-20 
ished from the Province House when the spirit of 
old Esther Dudley took its flight. And now, again, 
the clock of the Old South threw its voice of ages 
on the breeze, kn oiling the hourly knell of the past, 
crying out far and wide through the multitudinous 25 
city, and filling our ears, as we sat in the dusky 
chamber, with its reverberating depth of tone. In 
that same mansion—in that very chamber—what 
a volume of history had been told off into hours 
by the same voice that was now trembling in the 30' 
air! Many a governor had heard those midnight 


148 


TWICE-TOLD TALES 


accents, and longed to exchange his stately cares 
for slumber. And, as for mine host and Mr. Bela 
Tiffany and the old loyalist and me, we had bab¬ 
bled about dreams of the past until we almost 
5 fancied that the clock was still striking in a by 
gone century. Neither of us would have wondered 
had a hoop-petticoated phantom of Esther Dudley 
tottered into the chamber, walking her rounds in the 
hush of midnight as of yore, and motioned us to 
10 quench the fading embers of the fire and leave the 
historic precincts to herself and her kindred shades. 
But, as no such vision was vouchsafed, I retired 
unbidden, and would advise Mr. Tiffanv to lav 
hold of another auditor, being resolved not to 
15 show my face in the Province House for a good 
while hence—if ever. 


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